Protagonist Women - International Policy Centre for inclusive Growth

Transcription

Policy
A publication of
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
United Nations Development Programme
Protagonist Women
March 2014

No. 27
Summary
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) is a joint project
between the United Nations and Brazil to promote South-South learning on social
policies. It specialises in research-based policy recommendations on how to reduce
poverty and inequality as well as boost inclusive development. The IPC-IG is linked
to the UNDP Brazil Country Office, the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs (SAE) and the
Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) of the Government of Brazil.
Director: Jorge Chediek
EDITORIAL
Senior Researcher: Diana Oya Sawyer
Policy in Focus
Policy in Focus is a regular publication of the International Policy Centre for
Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG). This special edition, explores some of the challenges
women are faced with around the world while simultaneously pointing to
successful cases of change and women’s empowerment progress, all the while
highlighting the role of protagonist women. This special edition was made in
partnership with UN Women Brazil.
Editor-in-Chief: Michael MacLennan,
UNDP/International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
Specialist Guest Editors: Diana Sawyer, Senior Researcher, UNDP/International
Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth and Ashleigh Kate Slingsby,
UNDP/International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
04
Feminicide and Violence Against Women
06
Women Struggle to Secure
Land Rights in Africa
08
Accountability in the Provision of Quality Health
Care for Women: Alyne da Silva Pimentel
10
Public Women: Gender
and Urban Space in Cairo
12
The Long, Long Struggle
for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
14
Subjective Well-being:
Future Female Happiness
16
Making the NREGA more Gender Responsive:
Reflections from the Field
20
Domestic Work:
Women’s Work, Decent Work?
22
An Impact Assessment:
the Formalisation of Domestic Work in Brazil
24
Social Transfers:
Strengthening Girls’ and Women’s Potential
as Protagonists in Development
26
Evaluation of the Programa Bolsa Família:
a Gender and Race Perspective
30
Self-Help Groups:
Empowering Women in India
32
Beijing+20:
Where Do We Stand?
Copy Editor: Jon Stacey, The Write Effect Ltd.
Publications Manager: Roberto Astorino
Art and Desktop Publishing: Rosa Maria Banuth and Thiago Fernandes
Cover Art: A graphic based on the original painting by Ashleigh Kate Slingsby
entitled “Protagonist Women” by the IPC-IG Publications Team.
Editor’s note: The IPC-IG is grateful to UN Women Brazil for their support in the
development of this special edition. In particular, we would like to extend our
thanks to Gisele Neto, for her dedication to the publication of this issue. Special
thanks are also extended to our Specialist Guest Editors Diana Sawyer and Ashleigh
Kate Slingsby for their editorial support and help in developing the concept for this
issue. Finally, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of the authors
for their generous and insightful contributions, without which, this issue simply
would not have been possible.
The views expressed in IPC-IG publications are the authors’ and not necessarily
those of the United Nations Development Programme or the Government of Brazil.
Rights and Permissions – All rights reserved. The text and data in this publication
may be reproduced as long as written permission is obtained from IPC-IG and the
source is cited. Reproductions for commercial purposes are forbidden.
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
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Editorial Office
E-mail: [email protected]
© 2014 International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
ISSN: 2318-8995
P
rotagonist Women highlights examples of women taking the lead in an
antagonistic society. The protagonist woman exists on the fault lines of society,
championing a now well-established social, cultural and economic revolution.
This revolution is aimed primarily at not only garnering women equal rights
to men and accounting for historical injustices but carving out a space in society
dedicated to tackling the particular challenges faced by women today. In this vein,
protagonist women recognise the pluralities of experiences and challenges that exist
for women globally. These include biological challenges, those of physical integrity and
reproductive health, as well as the challenges and restrictions inflicted by the values
and norms of society. This plurality of experiences accounts for the diverse range of
issues addressed in this issue of Policy in Focus.
Much progress has been achieved for women, demonstrated in the institutionalisation
of women’s rights in international and domestic law. Thus the issue commences with
a look into the realisation of the Maria da Penha Law concerning domestic violence in
Brazil (Maria da Penha Institute, UN Women Brazil). However, many obstacles to women
realising their full rights still exist, as is then demonstrated in Africa in terms of land rights
for women (Mary Kimani, Africa Renewal). The case of Alyne da Silva Pimentel illustrates
the mismatch between services and individual reproductive rights, even in a country
like Brazil, home to progressive social policies. (Mónica Arango Olaya, Center for
Reproductive Rights, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Valentina
Montoya Robledo, University de Los Andes).
This issue supplies insight into Egypt (Anouk De Koning, Radboud University, Nijmegen)
and Afghanistan (Rangina Kargar, Faryab Province Representative, National Assembly
of Afghanistan), where women are claiming their space in society and seeking to increase
their bargaining power in everyday negotiations. We then provide evidence of progress
being made in the livelihoods of women in terms of female happiness as an expression
of their subjective well-being (Marcelo Neri, Minister of the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs
and President of IPEA, Brazil)
The issue then explores the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(Dr Rebecca Reichmann Tavares, Representative, UN Women India Multi-Country Office, and
Subhalakshmi Nandi, UN Women India MCO), which has made major strides in enhancing
social protection for rural women workers in India. This is followed by a look into the
dynamics at play for the more than 43.6 million female domestic workers globally
(Malte Luebker, ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific), then specific insight is provided
into the case of Brazil (Edson Domingues and Kênia de Souza, Federal University
of Minas Gerais, Brazil). We expose the crucial role that gender-inclusive growth has to
play in spurring socio-economic development at large.
A broad overview of global initiatives dedicated to women’s empowerment via social
transfers is then presented (Maxine Molyneux, Director of the Institute of the Americas,
and Nicola Jones, Overseas Development Institute). Bolsa Família in Brazil (Ana Maria
Hermeto Camilo de Oliveira, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and self-help groups
in India (Ashleigh Kate Slingsby, the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth, UNDP)
serve as detailed examples of social protection programmes that facilitate women
leading their own empowerment.
Various international commitments derived from summits and international conferences
recognise gender equality. Thus we conclude the publication with a look at the Beijing+20
negotiations and the potential impact it will have on women’s rights and gendered
politics (Nadine Gasman, Resident Representative, UN Women, Brazil).
by Diana Sawyer and
Ashleigh Kate Slingsby
Women are underrepresented and marginalised from leadership positions,
rendering protagonist women key contributors to inclusive growth. Women face major
structural challenges that demand change to garner greater access to resources for
better livelihoods. It is hoped this issue exposes these challenges whilst demonstrating
examples of progress; revealing the achievements and ambitions of Protagonist Women.
Feminicide and Violence Against Women
by Maria da Penha Institute1 and UN Women Brazil2
Maria da Penha Maia Fernandes
is a survivor. As opposed to the nearly
50,000 women killed in the last decade
due to gender-based violence in Brazil,
she managed to survive two attempted
murders by her ex-husband. On the morning
of 29 May 1983, at age 38, she awoke to the
sound of a loud blast. She had been shot in
the back, a wound that eventually left her
a paraplegic. The perpetrator, her husband,
Colombian professor Marco Antonio Heredia
Viveros, wearing torn pyjamas and a rope
around his neck, claimed they had been
victims of a robbery.
Maria da Penha spent four months
recovering in several hospitals in
Fortaleza, her hometown, as well as
Brasília. When she arrived back home in
a wheelchair, she was kept under forced
confinement by her husband for 15 days.
During this period, her husband tried to
electrocute her in the shower.
The father of her three daughters—who
were six, five and two years old at the
time of the crimes—Marco Antonio was
extremely violent and prone to shouting,
outbursts of rage and aggression. He had
beaten his daughters in the past, but Maria
da Penha had always tried to defend herself
and avoided confrontation. She wanted a
divorce, but Marco Antonio refused. She was
afraid of leaving him because she constantly
witnessed cases of women who were
murdered by men and who had said they
loved their partners too much to let them go.
In March 2009, Maria da Penha spoke to TPM
Magazine about her experiences and views
on domestic violence, saying that “domestic
violence follows a cycle that includes the
following stages: violence, apology from
the perpetrator, a new honeymoon and a
new attack, which escalates and continues
into a new cycle” (2009).
At the time these crimes were committed
against her, there was no legal provision
in Brazil that could protect women who
were victims of domestic violence. Maria
da Penha had to rely on the police and
on the ordinary justice system. Gradually
she gathered enough evidence to press
charges against her ex-husband and
was successfully able to obtain the legal
4
authorisation to leave her house on the
condition that it would not be considered
abandoning the home, which could
threaten her ability to obtain child custody.
In 1991, Maria da Penha faced her exhusband for the first time before the courts.
Marco Antonio was tried and sentenced
to 15 years’ imprisonment but was able
to walk out of the courtroom a free man
because of his appeal. A year later, the
defence appealed the decision and was
able to invalidate the ruling. Three years
later, disappointed with the leniency of the
courts, Maria da Penha released the book
‘Sobrevivi... Posso contar’ (I survived... Let me
share), in which she told her story. The book
reached the offices of two NGOs, the Centre
for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)
and the Latin American Committee for the
Defence of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), both
of which followed up with her case.
In 1996, Marco Antonio was once again
tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison,
but because of further appeals that
prevented and delayed the serving of
his sentence, he had still not yet been
arrested. More than 15 years after the crime
had been committed and despite the two
rulings against him in the State Court of
Ceará, in 1998 the case remained open and
the perpetrator still free. That is when CEJIL,
CLADEM and Maria da Penha lodged an
official complaint against Brazil at the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights of
the Organization of American States (OAS).
The inconsistencies in the lawsuit and
the unjustified delays proved that the
Brazilian State had violated international
human rights regulations, especially the
American Convention on Human Rights
and the Convention of Belém do Pará.
It was also possible to demonstrate that
this was not an isolated case, but that a
systematic standard had been set in which
women who were victims of gender-based
violence were being denied access to
justice and within which the perpetrators
were continuing to commit abusive crimes
with seeming impunity.
In 2001, the Inter-American Commission
declared that Brazil was to be held
accountable for its neglect and omission,
as well as for its tolerance towards
domestic violence against women.
In the following year, the Commission
had to intervene once again to guarantee
the closure of the criminal lawsuit at
the national level and the arrest of the
aggressor, only six months before the
statute of limitations was set to expire.
Despite eventually being found guilty
before the courts, Marco Antonio still
lectured at the Federal University of Rio
Grande do Norte. He served the remainder
of his sentence in a closed prison regime
for two years and is now free again.
What Maria da Penha endured helped
to influence Brazilian legal changes.
Law no. 11,340, known as the ‘Maria da
Penha Law’, dated 7 August 2006, modified
the Brazilian Criminal Code to allow
perpetrators of crimes against women
to be arrested when caught committing
the offence and to authorise their
preventive detention. It also imposed
stricter punishments and established
measures to protect victims.
Before this legal modification, cases
concerning violence had been analysed
in light of Law no. 9,099/95, by the
Special Criminal Courts where only
‘petty’ crimes were judged meaning
sentences were limited to a maximum of
two years’ imprisonment. Another legal
alternative used back then were financial
penalties and the imposition of fines. The
legislation did not foresee the possibility
of the judge issuing an arrest warrant or
declaring the preventive detention of
the perpetrator. The Maria da Penha Law
also considers aggravating circumstances,
and establishes protective measures for
the victims and recovery mechanisms for
the aggressor. As such, Brazil took a step
forward by recognising for the first time
gender-based violence as a registered
and qualified crime.
According to Unifem (2008), the Maria da
Penha Law is considered one of the three
best pieces of legislation in the world when
it comes to fighting violence against women,
alongside the Law on Domestic Violence
of Mongolia (2004) and the Spanish Act on
Protection against Violence (2004).
Effectiveness of the law
In August 2013, seven years after the law
was enacted, the National Justice Council
(CNJ) held the VII Meeting on the Maria
da Penha Law. At the meeting, the Head
of the Secretariat for Women Policies,
Minister Eleonora Menicucci, highlighted
the importance of reporting cases of
violence to guarantee the effectiveness
of the legislation and the punishment
of the aggressors who commit violence
against women. According to an opinion
poll conducted by Data Popular and by
Institute Patrícia Galvão published in
July 2013, 86 per cent of the interviewees
believe that women were encouraged to
report cases of domestic violence after the
Maria da Penha Law was approved. At the
same event, the representative of CNJ, Ney
José de Freitas, stressed that “any measure
that can be effectively applied to thwart
this type of violence must be disseminated
because, unfortunately, we are still in a
period of law enforcement; the legislation
must be enforced; it is still not as effective
as it should be” (2013).
The feeling that violence against women
increased after the law came into effect is a
natural consequence of the ability to report
these crimes. In many cases, women who
are victims of violence no longer feel forced
to keep quiet, because they know that
they are legally protected and they are now
encouraged to speak up. Consequently,
the visibility of this type of violence, the
possibility of publicising it and finding
solutions are increasing considerably.
Moreover, the law is extremely popular:
according to the same survey, only 2 per
cent of the interviewees had never heard
of it. Nevertheless, many people continue
to be aware of the existence of the law but
have no knowledge of its content.
Source: DIEESE, 2011.
alarming level of one murdered woman
every two hours in Brazil, mostly occurring
in a domestic environment (Waiselfisz,
2011). In 84 per cent of these cases (Central
de Atendimento à Mulher, 2013), the
perpetrator is the victim’s partner, husband,
boyfriend or former lover. However, since
there are no unified statistics, these
numbers may be even higher.
Estimates reveal that 5000 women are
murdered every year in the country (Ipea,
2013), the figures in other Latin American
countries are also concerning. In Mexico,
feminicide amounts to an average of 2500
victims per year (CESFCD & UN Women,
2012). In Colombia, 1146 women were
murdered in 2012 (Instituto Nacional de
Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses y Alta
Consejería Presidencial para la Equidad de la
Mujer, 2013). In Honduras, 606 women were
killed, representing an increase of 246.3 per
cent in the last eight years (ONVPH, 2013).
The Brazilian justice system, however, did
not keep up with the legislative progress.
Although the law has been repeatedly
declared constitutional (after some judges
refused to apply it), the Brazilian legal
sector still does not fully recognise the
severity of domestic and family violence.
Due to the high feminicide rate all over the
world, in 2008 the UN Secretary-General
launched the campaign ‘UNiTE to End
Violence against Women’. This campaign is
an effort to prevent and eliminate violence
against women and girls. The initiative
summons governments, civil society,
women’s organisations, youth, the private
sector, the media, the entire UN system
and, especially, men to unite to put an
end to the global phenomenon of genderbased violence.
Feminicide in Brazil
According to the 2012 Violence Map,
Brazil ranks seventh in a ranking of 84
countries for the number of murdered
women. Over 92,000 women have been
murdered since 1980—half of them in
the last decade. At the apex of violence,
feminicide—the killing of women simply
because they are women—reaches the
The topic of feminicide is at the core of
the UNiTE campaign because the highest
feminicide rates are recorded in Latin
America. These are avoidable crimes.
Countries such as Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua
and Peru have already listed feminicide
(or femicide) as a crime in their legislation
and criminal codes. In Brazil, the Senate is
currently analysing a legislative bill
that categorises feminicide as a crime.
By transforming the gender-driven murder
of women into a specific type of homicide,
it will be possible to thwart violence
against women and to reduce impunity.
It is necessary to acknowledge that
violence against women and girls is
the expression of a social and cultural
phenomenon of power and submission
between men and women, which leads to
multiple human rights violations and which
is not natural, acceptable or tolerable in any
way. An efficient justice system produces
more effective and stricter punishments,
which promote not only redress but also
have a preventive impact, sending an
unequivocal message that violence against
women will not be accepted under any
circumstance. Thus, by means of our daily
and unyielding efforts, we will be able
to build a different future—one that will
enable women and girls to live their lives
free from any type of violence.
Central de Atendimento à Mulher (2013).
Balanço semestral, 1st semester of 2013. Brasília,
Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres da
Presidência da República.
CESFCD (Comisión Especial para el Seguimiento
de los Feminicidios, Cámara de Diputados)
and UN Women (2012). Violencia feminicida
en México. Características, tendencias y nuevas
expresiones en las entidades federativas,
1985-2010. México. UN Women.
Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias
Forenses y Alta Consejería Presidencial para la
Equidad de la Mujer (2013). Colombia.
Instituto Patrícia Galvão e Data Popular (2013).
Percepção da Sociedade sobre Violência e
Assassinatos de Mulheres, <http://www.spm.
gov.br/publicacoes-teste/publicacoes/2013/
livro_pesquisa_violencia.pdf>
(accessed 10 February 2014).
IPEA (2013). Violência contra a mulher:
feminicídios no Brasil. Brasília, Instituto de
Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada.
Policy in Focus
5
Waiselfisz, J.J. (2011). Mapa da Violência 2012.
Os novos padrões da violência homicida no Brasil.
São Paulo, Instituto Sangari.
La Policia De Honduras, (2013) Observatorio
Nacional de la Violencia de la Policía de
Honduras. Honduras.
UN Women and Cfemea (2011). Progress of the
World’s Women 2011–2012 — In Pursuit of Justice.
New York, UN Women.
Unifem (2008). Progresso das Mulheres no Mundo
2008/2009. Unifem.
1. The institute is dedicated to expanding and
creating mechanisms to restrain and prevent
domestic and family violence against women,
in accordance with the Maria da Penha law. It
is a non-governmental organization, working
on strengthening its identity and objectives
through education, women’s work and
sustainable development.
2. UN Women Brazil is dedicated to the rapid
progress of women in society. It works with the
fundamental assumptions that women and girls
around the world have the right to a life free of
discrimination, violence and poverty, and that
gender equality is a central requirement for
achieving development.
Women Struggle to Secure Land Rights in Africa1
by Mary Kimani, Africa Renewal
Women in Africa contribute 60-80 per cent
to food production labour and 80–100 per
cent to food processing, as well as storage
and transport (FAO). Yet many never regain
access or rights to matrimonial land lost
after divorce or the death of a spouse.
In Africa women often lack rights to land.
Land rights tend to be held by men or
kinship groups controlled by men, and
women have access mainly through a
male relative, usually a father or husband.
Even then, women are routinely obliged
to hand over the proceeds of any farm
sales to a male and have little say over
how those earnings are used. Moreover,
such limited access is very tenuous and
can be quickly lost. One study showed
that in Zambia more than one third of
widows lost access to family land when
their husbands died (Chapoto, 2007). It
is this dependency on men that leaves
many African women vulnerable.
The spread of HIV/AIDS and the stigma
associated with the disease have
only made women’s land rights more
precarious. Widows of men who die from
the disease have often been accused
of bringing the malady into the family,
possibly leading to the confiscation of
their land and other property.
is a historical problem in Africa. Before
colonial rule, land ownership and access
took diverse forms but were largely vested
in lineages, clans and families, with male
leaders exercising day-to-day control.
Members of a particular lineage or clan
would seek rights to use land from those
community or family leaders.
Except in a few communities, where
inheritance passed through the mother,
only male heirs have typically inherited land
rights. Women rarely had full rights to land.
They were seen as secondary beneficiaries
via male relatives. Historically women
had traditional protections that ensured
continued access even after separation,
divorce or widowhood. There also were
traditional means of arbitration to which
women could appeal if access was contested.
With colonial rule came the introduction of
Western systems of land tenure. In East and
Southern Africa, the high number of white
settlers encouraged the privatization and
subdivision of land, held under individual
freehold titles. In West Africa much
land was left under communal forms of
ownership, managed by customary leaders.
made fertile land more valuable and
increased competition for its control.
Such pressures, together with changes in
family structures and clan relations, have
eroded traditional social safeguards that
ensured access to land for women.
So while many land disputes in Africa are
still formally governed by customary law,
these protections do not exist in the
domain of modern law. Today there are
many situations, such as cohabitation
without marriage, to which traditional
norms do not apply. Consequently, many
women have lost access to land.
Many African countries today recognize
both “traditional” rules of land ownership
and Western-type statutory laws. In Nigeria,
the state assumed ownership of all land
after independence in 1960. Although
this weakened customary land tenure,
traditional laws still were recognized by the
government in areas of long-established
clan and lineage ownership. The recognition
of Islamic law in Nigeria’s northern states
complicated the situation further.
In response, activists are fighting to
introduce or strengthen laws intended
to give women more secure access
to land and are combating social norms
and practices that stand in their way.
Despite many obstacles, they are
making some headway.
With independence, some new
governments, such as those in Tanzania,
Mozambique and Benin, proclaimed state
ownership over all land. In Kenya and
South Africa private ownership existed
alongside lineage or clan ownership. In
Nigeria, clan and lineage ownership
coexisted with both state and private
ownership, especially in urban areas.
Land titling
One solution that Western development
experts initially promoted to overcome the
shortcomings of customary law was to give
land titles to individuals. Esther Mwangi, a
prominent land rights researcher, noted
that governments in East and Southern
Africa followed the course of land titling, in
an effort to ensure that individuals had legal
title to their land. This policy was expected
to help women secure legal rights to
properties that they owned or inherited.
Historical legacy
Researchers from the International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) note that
the marginal nature of women’s land rights
Environmental legacy
Over the years, rapid population growth
has contributed to the overuse of land
and to the depletion of soils. This has
Mwangi’s research attests to the fact that
the privatization process has actually
stripped women of their access to
land. During titling operations, it was
6
mainly men who got their names on the
appropriate documentation because they
were deemed to be the ‘household heads’.
Widows lucky enough to get land were
allocated the smallest lots.
Land rights activists suggest that one way
to give women guaranteed access to land
is to separate formal ownership of land
from the ability to use it. Thus, while the
land may be registered in the name of a
man, he would be barred from selling it
without the consent of his wife (or wives)
or other heirs. As a result, Ghana now has
a ‘head of family accountability law’ that
is intended to ensure that family property
cannot be sold without others being
informed, giving consent or benefiting
from the proceeds.
Resistance to reform
But such ideas may be easier proposed
than implemented. Activists for women’s
land rights have tried to have laws passed
in many countries, with mixed results.
In Uganda, where there was very active
lobbying by the Uganda Land Alliance
for both men and women to be listed in
title deeds as co-owners, the bills have
repeatedly come before parliament, yet
have failed each time.
Where progressive laws have passed,
things do not necessarily get easier.
In Mozambique, civil society groups
have successfully lobbied and helped
to influence the formation of a law in 1997
entitling women to secure access to land
and property. However, implementation
proved difficult because traditional
courts, which most rural women use,
still consider the man the head of
household and therefore the rightful
authority over land.
In Ghana the 1985 Intestate Succession
Law and the Head of Household
Accountability Law were both intended
to create greater security for widows and
children. If a man died without a will, the
succession law decreed that his property
would be equally divided and distributed
among his widow, children and other
members of the extended family.
Yet a study conducted by the UN’s
Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) in Ghana’s Volta Region found
that few women knew of the law and
that customary practices continued to
determine inheritance. That left many
women without access to land after
the death of their partner.
Changing institutions
What women need is for their basic rights
to be entrenched in constitutions and for
equal rights of property ownership to be
clearly stipulated in the law. Where this has
already been done, it is necessary to bring
all inheritance and land laws into harmony
with the constitution, so that there is no
basis for contradictory interpretations.
In addition, legal institutions responsible
for implementing the land laws need
to operate equitably, be friendly and
accessible to women and extend their
reach to the countryside. Continuing
challenges remain in regards to how to
best go about doing so.
UN Women’s Africa programme for rural
women has several pillars through which
women’s role in agricultural transformation
can be enhanced. It considers equitable land
allocation as critical to such a transformation.
One of its strategies is “to strengthen the
capacities of the ministries of agriculture
to prioritize support to women food
production systems in their planning
and resource allocation mechanisms.”
(Asian Development Bank, 2011).
Combating negative norms
Broader cultural change is also vital.
Land allocations have particular cultural
understandings of the role of women.
Mwangi’s observations regarding the
culture of land ownership indicate that
men are resistant to the idea of women
as property owners and decision-makers
when it comes to land.
One of UN Women’s key messages is
that rural women play a key role in food
production and food security in Africa.
The UN agency encourages governments,
development partners and the private
sector to enhance women’s rights to land,
arguing that ‘if it benefits rural women,
you can call it development.’
This is a major issue considering women
are overwhelmingly responsible for land
productivity. Therefore unequal power
relations also need to be addressed within
families for a tangible impact to be achieved.
Positive developments
However, some positive outcomes have
been achieved. For instance, in Swaziland,
women cannot own land because they are
considered minors under the law, yet some
HIV-positive widows who lost access to
land after their husbands died were able to
negotiate with a female chief to persuade
other chiefs to give them land they could
use to secure their livelihood.
In Kenya, community watchdog
organizations and other groups providing
home-based care for those living with HIV/
AIDS are intervening. When they encounter
property grabbing, they negotiate, mostly
with male members of the family, for
women and girls to retain access to the
land and property.
In Rwanda, the government passed a
law in 1999 giving women inheritance
rights equal to those of males, overruling
traditional norms by which only male
children could inherit property. This has
enabled widows and female orphans of
the 1994 genocide to secure access to land.
Currently, UN agencies such as FAO, UN
Women and the UN Development Fund
are working with non-governmental
organizations to raise awareness among
women of their rights and to support
efforts to entrench equality of access to
land within national laws.
Asian Development Bank (2011). Food For All:
Investing in food Security in Asia and the Pacific,
Issues, Innovations and Practices (Manila).
Food and Agriculture Organisation (1996).
Towards sustainable food security Women
and Sustainable Food Security. Women in
Development Service (SDWW), FAO Women
and Population Division.
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.
<www.agra.org> (accessed 2012).
Chapoto A., Jayne T.S and Mason N.(2007).
Policy Synthesis Food Security Research Project
Zambia: Security of Widows’Access to Land in
the Era of HIV/AIDS: Panel Survey Evidence from
Zambia. Ministry of Agriculture & Cooperatives,
Agricultural Consultative Forum, Michigan State
University – Lusaka Zambia.
Cousins, B. (2009). Potential and pitfalls of
‘communal’ land tenure reform: experience in Africa
and implications for South Africa. Paper for World
Bank conference on ‘Land Governance in support
of the MDGs: Responding to new challenges’.
Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies
(PLAAS), University of the Western Cape.
Duncan B.A. & Brants C.(2004). Access to
and Control Over Land from a Gender
Perspective: A study conducted in the Volta
Region of Ghana. Supported by: Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,
Regional Office for Africa, SNV Netherlands
Development Organisation, Women in Law
and Development in Africa (Ghana).
1. Please note that this is an abbreviated version
of the article of the same name published in the
2012 Africa Renewal Special Edition on Women
(p. 37) <http://www.un.org/africarenewal/
magazine/special-edition-women-2012/womenstruggle-secure-land-rights>.
Policy in Focus
7
Accountability in the Provision of Quality
Health Care for Women: Alyne da Silva Pimentel
by Mónica Arango Olaya and Valentina Montoya Robledo,
Center for Reproductive Rights
The Alyne da Silva Pimentel v. Brazil
case (Alyne’s case) decided by the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination
of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW Committee) in August 2011
constitutes a milestone for the protection
of reproductive rights in international
human rights law. In addition to being the
first international law decision from the
universal system that approaches maternal
mortality from a human rights perspective,
it raises the question of accountability
around the obligation to ensure quality
essential health care services to pregnant
women, without discrimination.
The human rights approach to maternal
mortality set forth in this decision and
within international human rights law
becomes void without accountability
mechanisms that can ensure monitoring,
responsibility and redress. This article
addresses the question of accountability
for reproductive rights and the obligation
to provide quality health care services
in Alyne’s case.
Alyne: one of many in Brazil
Maternal mortality has substantially
declined in Brazil in the last decade.
Millennium Development Goal 5 states
that maternal mortality should decline by
75 per cent by 2015. Brazil has reduced it
by 51 per cent (Cook, 2013) from 103.43
deaths per 100,000 live births in 1998
to 56 deaths per 100,000 live births in
2010 (WHO and UNFPA, 2012). However
challenges in providing quality services
without discrimination still persist (WHO,
2007). Maternal mortality rates are higher
in the North and Northeast regions of
Brazil, which contain a greater share of
poverty and larger rural populations than
the rest of the country.
According to Brazil’s Ministry of Health,
Afro-Brazilian women are 50 per cent more
likely to die of obstetric-related causes
than white women (2006a). Other studies
even suggest that the maternal mortality
8
rate of Afro-descendant women is three
times higher than that of their white
counterparts (Seelke, 2008). Indigenous
and low-income women are also affected
by higher maternal mortality rates,
particularly adolescents and women
from rural areas (Ministry of Health of
Brazil, 2006a). Brazil has recognised that
“poverty is concentrated on black or Afrodescending women” (CEDAW Committee,
2002), and that racism operates within the
public health services provided to Afrodescendant patients (AMNB, 2007).
The root causes of maternal mortality
in Brazil are racial, socio-economic and
gender-based disparities in access to
health care (Ministry of Health
of Brazil, 2006b).
Alyne’s case is emblematic, as
it demonstrates the structural
discrimination in access to quality health
care women face every day. Alyne was a
28-year-old Afro-Brazilian woman who in
2002 suffered a high-risk pregnancy and
was denied timely care at private and
public health facilities. She died following
the delivery of a stillbirth, leaving behind
her five-year-old daughter. Had access to
basic obstetric health care been provided,
Alyne would have survived.
The case was presented before national
courts, but in 2007, after five years
of ineffective remedies, it was taken
before the CEDAW Committee, arguing
essentially that the Brazilian State violated
Alyne’s rights to health care without
discrimination. The CEDAW Committee
determined Brazil’s responsibility.
It established that Brazil had failed to
provide appropriate care to Alyne by
not performing adequate tests, delaying
the services disproportionally, lacking
adequate equipment, delaying the transfer
to another health facility, and lacking
appropriate medical records when the
transfer took place.
The State argued that a private institution,
not the State, was responsible for
the inappropriate care. However the
Committee established the State’s direct
responsibility for the action of private
institutions, and its duty to monitor and
regulate them.
This finding reiterated the understanding
of the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights of the Ximenes Lopes v. Brazil case,
according to which, when States outsource
the rendering of public services, they
remain responsible “to supervise their
performance in order to guarantee the
effective protection of the human rights
of the individuals under the jurisdiction
thereof and the rendering of such
services to the population on the basis of
non-discrimination and as effectively as
possible” (Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, 2006).
The Committee recommended that Brazil
compensate Alyne’s mother and daughter
and implement general measures to
prevent similar incidents and to improve
the quality of maternal health care without
discrimination. Three of the general
recommendations revolved around
accountability:
i. effective remedies around
reproductive rights violations;
ii. the State’s responsibility for
private institutions that provide
public services; and
iii. adequate sanctions for medical
personnel who violate
reproductive rights.
Accountability to ensure quality
reproductive health care services
The UN Committee on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights (CESCR) described four
interrelated essential elements within the
right to health: affordability, accessibility,
acceptability and quality (CESCR, 2000).
Quality refers to scientifically and
medically appropriate goods and services,
which require “skilled medical personnel,
scientifically approved and unexpired
drugs and hospital equipment, safe
and potable water, and adequate
sanitation” (Ibid).
The Technical Guidance on the application
of a human rights-based approach to
the implementation of policies and
programmes to reduce preventable
maternal morbidity and mortality
(Human Rights Council, 2012) links
quality of health care and accountability.
The Technical Guidance details the
content of quality health care related
to safe motherhood, and fosters
“accountability in accordance with
human rights standards” (Ibid).
It considers accountability “fundamental
to each stage of the process—from
identifying accountability gaps in a
situational analysis to ensuring appropriate
monitoring mechanisms and remedies
in a national plan, to allocating resources
for these mechanisms and remedies, to
ensuring feedback from the ground through
to implementation in practice” (Ibid). It has
three basic components:
monitoring,
reviewing, and
imposing remedies.
Monitoring relies on the availability
of effective qualitative and quantitative
indicators, and functioning information
systems. Reviewing operates at the
administrative, social, political, national and
international levels, and involves public
and private actors (Ibid).
The remedies component refers to
mechanisms to make rights effective (Ibid).
Within the Technical Guidance’s
description of the three basic components
of accountability, Alyne’s case exposed a
structural problem: the Brazilian State’s
failure to adopt mechanisms, or implement
existing ones, to monitor and review the
provision of quality health care in public
and outsourced private institutions, as
well as to provide adequate remedies for
and investigate and sanction reproductive
rights violations.
Some final remarks
Alyne’s case revolves around the issue
of the provision of low quality health
care services to a poor pregnant
Afro-Brazilian woman.
This was reflected in the lack of essential
medical examinations, inappropriate
equipment and facilities, inefficient referral
and lack of medical information, in both
public and private health care institutions.
Such deficiencies were found to constitute
a lack of compliance with human
rights standards. Unfortunatley these
problems have not been overcome
in the last decade.
Despite the CEDAW Committee’s
recommendations and the decision of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
on the Ximenes Lopes case, regarding the
Brazilian State’s obligation to monitor and
review the provision of quality health care
services, access to quality reproductive
health care for vulnerable women, such
as Alyne, is still limited. Violations of
reproductive rights continue to avoid
being prosecuted or sanctioned efficiently.
CESCR (2000). Substantive Issues Arising
In The Implementation Of The International
Covenant On Economic, Social And Cultural
Rights. The right to the highest attainable
standard of health (article 12 of the
International ovenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, E/C.12/2000/4.
Geneva, Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, para. 12.
Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women (2002). Brazil: Consideration of
reports submitted by States parties under Article
18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women, 29th
Session, Geneva, CEDAW/C/BRA/1-5,
<http://www.bayefsky.com/reports/brazil_
cedaw_c_bra_1_5_2002.pdf>
(accessed 15 January 2014).
Cook, R. (2013). ‘Human Rights and Maternal
Health: Exploring the Effectiveness of the
Alyne Decision. Global Health and the Law’,
Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics,
Vol. 41, Issue 1: 103–123, p.104.
Galli Bevilacqua, M.B.G. (2013). ‘Letter from
the National Rapporteur for Sexual and
Reproductive Rights to Dr. Procurador
Geral Federal’, on file with author.
Human Rights Council (2012). Technical
guidance on the application of a human
rightsbased approach to the implementation of
policies and programmes to reduce preventable
maternal morbidity and mortality, A/HRC/21/22.
Geneva, Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights.
Alyne’s case addresses the issue of
accountability as a central requirement to
ensure quality in the provision of health
care services. Accountability becomes
fundamental to ensure safe motherhood
in a broader context of human
rights protection.
It brings access to safe motherhood to
a new level, not only recognising it as a
human right, but ensuring its effectiveness
through the imposition of remedies and
sanctions in cases of low-quality health
care and reproductive rights violations.
Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2006).
‘Case of Ximenes-Lopes v. Brazil’. San José, Costa
Rica, Inter-American Court of Human Rights,
para. 96, <http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/
articulos/seriec_149_ing.pdf>
Ministry of Health of Brazil (2006a). Brazil Health
2006: An Analysis of Inequality in Health. Brasilia,
Ministério da Saúde.
The judgement provides an impetus for
Brazil and the world to rethink its public
policies on maternal mortality and commit
to gender equality and non-discrimination.
Ministry of Health of Brazil (2006b).
‘Painel de Indicadores do SUS’. Brasilia,
Ministério da Saúde, <http://www.fiocruz.br/
redeblh/media/indicadsus1.pdf>
The decision is a landmark, by not
only recognising safe motherhood as
a reproductive right in particular and
as human right in general, but also by
requiring women’s reproductive rights to
be effectively implemented and monitored
to properly address the provision
of quality health care.
Seelke, C.R. (2008). Afro-Latinos in Latin America
and Considerations for U.S. Policy (RL32713).
Washington, DC, Congressional Research Service,
<http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_
workplace/486> (accessed 15 January 2014).
AMNB (2007), Dossier Regarding the
Situation of Black Women in Brazil. Porto Alegre,
Articulación de Organizaciones de Mujeres
Negras Brasileñas: 25.
WHO (2007). Maternal Mortality in
2005: Estimates Developed by WHO,
UNICEF, UNFPA 23–27. Geneva,
World Health Organization, 1–40.
WHO and UNFPA (2012). ‘Trends in maternal
mortality: 1990 to 2010’. Geneva, World Health
Organization: 32, <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/
publications/2012/9789241503631_eng.pdf>
Policy in Focus
9
Public Women:
Gender and Urban Space in Cairo1
by Anouk de Koning, Radboud University
Women claiming full access to public
space have incited heated debates around
the world (e.g. Wilson, 2001; Secor, 2002;
Phadke, 2007). In Europe and the USA,
feminist activists have put women’s right
to public space on the agenda through
actions such as take-back-the-night
marches. In many cities in the global South,
the stakes of being in public as a woman
have similarly been high. Notwithstanding
the common threads in such contestations,
gendered definitions of social space differ
markedly across urban landscapes. This
article touches upon some of the everyday
negotiations of public space, class and
gender in contemporary Cairo. These
Cairene negotiations of public space
illustrate the profoundly gendered and
classed nature of urban landscapes in
Egypt, and beyond.
In early 2011 an 18-day-long uprising
brought down the Mubarak regime in
Egypt. It temporarily transformed Cairo’s
central Tahrir Square into an almost ideal
counter-republic. The sense of community
that resulted from a deeply felt quest for
justice created a space in which the usual
social fault lines and tensions had no place.
Christians protected Muslims during prayer,
poor and rich chanted and slept side by
side. The exceptional nature of the mass
protests seemed to be underscored by the
strong presence of women in the square.
Since both public space and politics are
generally constructed as male domains, the
presence of women was seen to indicate
the broad base and urgency of the protests.
Moreover, the absence of harassments that
otherwise marked women’s experiences in
Cairo’s public spaces illustrated to many both
the utopian nature of what one could call
Republic Tahrir, and the promises
of the revolution.
As soon as Mubarak stepped down,
much of this utopian promise dissipated,
and many of the usual social fault lines
resurfaced. Among other things, sexual
harassment returned.
10
This article goes back a few years before
the 2011 uprising to explore the stakes
with regards to women’s presence in
public. It examines issues of gender and
public space by focusing on the ways
in which young female professionals
navigated the cityscape of Cairo. What do
their urban trajectories tell us about the
gendered (and classed) constitution of
urban landscapes?
A cosmopolitan class
In the course of 2002 I made the
acquaintance of a number of highpowered upper-middle-class women in
their late 20s and early 30s. These young
professionals were among the most visible
exponents of Egypt’s new liberal age:
young, sophisticated women, relatively
fluent in English, who were employed in
the internationally oriented segment of
Cairo’s economy and claimed knowledge
of global trends and cosmopolitan
fashions (De Koning, 2009b).
The presence of these upper-middle-class
women in both professional and social
public life had become normalised, even
critical to upper-middle-class lifestyles,
which were marked by the mixed-gender
character of contacts and places. Their
negotiations of space and their public
performances were part of an elite class
project that, on account of its continuous
references to barra—the ‘West’ or the
‘First World’—can be labelled as
conspicuously cosmopolitan.
The safe space of the coffee shop
On a spring day in 2004, I found Amal2
sharing a table with our common friend,
Miriyam. Randa soon joined us. All three
were professionals in their early 30s, from
well-to-do families and employed in the
internationally oriented segment of the
urban economy. Like most of the other
women at the Retro Café, they wore tight
jeans and T-shirts. The small café with its art,
earth tones and modern wooden furniture
was designed to give a contemporary, yet
warm sense of comfort and home.
Our discussion soon converged on the
importance of coffee shops for women.
“Coffee shops were able to gather girls
from their houses and the club,” Amal
said. “Before, we did not have places
where we could spend time after work.”
The overwhelming presence of women
in most coffee shops indeed presented
one of the striking features of coffee
shop social life. In these upscale coffee
shops both veiled and non-veiled women
often constituted more than half of the
customers. Many single professional
women like Amal and Miriyam had taken
to spending much of their time in coffee
shops such as the Retro Café.
Since their introduction in the mid-1990s,
these conspicuously cosmopolitan coffee
shops have become emblematic of a
young, upper-middle-class presence in
Cairo’s urban landscape. The US style
coffee shop formula turned out to be
ideally suited for the Cairene context,
since it was part of global flows of
distinctive cultural consumption yet was
not associated with ‘immoral’ spaces of
alcohol and subterranean sexuality such as
bars or nightclubs. Upmarket coffee shops
provided upper-middle-class professionals
with new opportunities for socialising,
finding partners and other forms of
networking and self-presentation.
Coffee shops had wrested such mixedgender social settings away from
associations with immorality and
loose sexual behaviour that clung to
less exclusive mixed-gender spaces
outside the redemptive familial sphere,
and thereby offered young female
professionals the opportunity of
respectable public lifestyles.
The rather exclusive context of the coffee
shop helped frame a woman’s appearance
and behaviour as upper-middle-class and
thereby guaranteed that her presence
in that space would be read as part of a
respectable lifestyle. However, in the streets,
where upmarket norms are not hegemonic,
such representations could easily be
overturned. The same fashionable cut
(sleeveless top) would seem out of place but
could also be taken as a sign of disrepute
and easy morals—an open invitation to
comments and even harassment.
Into the urban jungle
In contrast to the closed coffee shops,
Cairo’s streets were largely characterised by
male entitlement. The street was a space
for men to inhabit, a space where they
could spend time, observe and interact
with passers-by, comment and flirt.
Unaccompanied young women, in
contrast, had a limited and ambiguous
status as marginalised, and potentially
illegitimate and disreputable, passers-by
(see also Ghannam, 2002). They were
supposed to be on their way somewhere,
have a clear destination and not linger for
too long. Hanging around in the streets,
especially on their own, was taken as an
open invitation for men to make contact.
Young women particularly were subject
to constant observation and judgements.
Such judgements were based on looks,
class markers and signs of modesty such
as veils or loose-fitting clothing. Yet each
of these styles had to be negotiated across
diverse spaces with differing interpretations
of a woman’s presence. How the tight,
yet not too revealing jeans and top or
the fashionable matching headscarf and
loose-fitting dress would be interpreted
depended entirely on socio-spatial context.
Purity and defilement were central issues
in the urban trajectories of young uppermiddle-class women. Concerns about
women’s movement focused on their
unscathed passage through public space,
and invoked the numerous dangers of
harassment and defilement that were
seen to accompany such presence in
public spaces. These were invariably
sexualised dangers that threatened a
woman’s sexual purity and respectability.
The avoidance and barring of unwanted
gazes and unwarranted contact, were
central features of upper-middle-class
strategies regarding transportation. Two
common means of transport had come to
symbolise the two extremes of experience
in public: the bus stood for forced
proximity and possible harassment, while
the car represented control, protection
and absolute freedom of movement.
Gendered fears and the fragility of class
The urban trajectories of these Cairene
women show us a city that is crosscut by
intersecting fault lines of gender, class,
age and lifestyle. They navigated the city
based on experiential maps of the city that
included spaces of comfort and belonging
in which they expected their presence to
be framed as respectable and the general
public to be held to those same standards
of respectability. Their maps also featured
open, less class-specific spaces, such as
streets, in which they knew they could not
control social identifications and feared
they might be misidentified.
The public presence of these female
young urban professionals had become
one of the most significant markers of
the young upper-middle-class culture
that had developed in Cairo’s new leisure
spaces in the 1990s. This public presence
was, however, fragile and evoked severe
anxieties about the possible harm that
could come to female upper-middle-class
bodies in the city’s public spaces.
“
Coffee shops
had wrested such mixedgender sociabilities away
from associations with
immorality and loose
sexual behaviour that
clung to less exclusive
mixed-gender spaces
outside the redemptive
familial sphere, and
thereby offered young
female professionals the
opportunity of respectable
public lifestyles.
In contrast to the closed
coffee shops, Cairo’s
streets were largely
characterised by
male entitlement.
The dangers that being in public
represented for the upper-middle-class
female body were simultaneously symbolic
and physical. Just as upper-middle-class
women’s reputations were easily damaged
or ruined, upper-middle-class bodies were
easily harmed and defiled. The sense of
privilege that emanated from this female
public presence as the manifestation of a
conspicuously cosmopolitan class project,
was thus matched by a strong sense of
fragility and threat.
The street was a space
for men to inhabit, a
space where they could
spend time, observe and
interact with passers-by,
comment and flirt.
Unaccompanied young
women, in contrast,
had a liminal and
ambiguous status as
marginalised, and
potentially illegitimate and
disreputable, passers-by.
De Koning, A. (2009a). ‘Gender, Public
Space and Social Segregation in Cairo: of Taxi
Drivers, Prostitutes and Professional Women’,
Antipode, 41(3): 533–556.
De Koning, A. (2009b). Global Dreams: Class,
Gender, and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo.
Cairo, American University in Cairo Press.
Ghannam, F. (2002). Remaking the Modern: Space,
Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global
Cairo. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of
California Press.
Secor, A. (2002). ‘The Veil and Urban Space in
Istanbul: Women’s Dress, Mobility and Islamic
Knowledge’, Gender, Place & Culture, 9(1): 5–22.
Phadke, S. (2007). ‘Dangerous liaisons:
Women and men: Risk and reputation in
Mumbai’, Economic and Political Weekly,
28 April, 1510–1518.
Wilson, E. (2001). The Contradictions of Culture:
Cities, Culture, Women. London, SAGE.
1. This article is a revised and abridged version of
De Koning (2009a).
2. All names used are pseudonyms.
Policy in Focus
11
The Long, Long Struggle
for Women’s Rights in Afghanistan
by Rangina Kargar, National Assembly of Afghanistan, Representative - Faryab Province
Afghan women have long been
marginalised and accorded a subordinate
position in their families and society.
Their position has been shaped by many
factors reflecting the strong cultural and
historical roots of gender discrimination in
Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic
and traditional society that has been
governed along tribal lines. In addition,
years of severe drought, more than two
decades of civil war and devastation in
addition to five years under the Taliban
authorities have left the country one
of the poorest in the world.
Afghanistan has one of the highest
maternal and child mortality rates in the
world. This was the case before the Taliban
came to power, as were the extremely low
literacy rates among women. However,
before Taliban rule, women participated
economically, socially and politically in
society. Women helped to draft the 1964
Constitution, in the 1970s there were at least
three women legislators in the Parliament,
and up to the early 1990s women served as
teachers, government workers and medical
doctors. They worked as professors, lawyers,
judges, journalists, writers and poets.
After the Taliban’s rise to power,
women and girls were systematically
discriminated against and marginalised,
and their human rights were violated.
This resulted in the deterioration of
economic and social conditions for
women and girls in all areas of the
country, especially those under Taliban
control. Women and girls continued to
be severely restricted in their access
to education, health care facilities and
employment. Poor health conditions
and malnutrition made pregnancy and
childbirth exceptionally dangerous for
Afghan women.
In 2001 the Taliban government was
overthrown and re-established itself
as an insurgency movement. Afghan
women began to increase their efforts
to achieve a more equitable position in
society. These years ushered in numerous
events organised by Afghan women’s
organisations, both inside and outside
the country, including panel discussions,
conferences and international meetings,
to ensure that the experiences and needs
of Afghan women were recognised and
accounted for in post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Photo: Students at a midwifery school in Nili, Afghanistan. UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein.
12
Today new opportunities have been
presented for women to reclaim their rights
as active participants in the governance
as well as in the rehabilitation and
reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Schools for girls are being reopened, and
young women are enrolling in universities.
Women are seeking to return to their former
jobs as teachers, doctors and civil servants.
Radio and television broadcasts in Kabul
and other provinces once again now feature
women commentators. Despite all these
developments for women, a myriad of
problems persist in the political, social and
cultural spheres of life for Afghan women.
Education
It is widely known that education, especially
for girls, is a basic requirement for an
improved standard of life in any society.
However, approximately 85 per cent of
women and girls are illiterate in Afghanistan.
This can be attributed to widespread gender
discrimination in society’s customary
practices, family poverty, security challenges
and a shortage of female schools.
Health
Access to health care services is a
fundamental human right, but
unfortunately most Afghanis, especially
women, are deprived of this right. The lack
of doctors and nurses, hospitals and health
care centres is a critical issue. Poverty and
low family income further exacerbate the
problem, accounting for the exceptionally
high child and maternal mortality rates.
Recent studies on the inaccessibility of health
care services to women can be attributed to
multiple factors including cultural tradition,
non-existent or substandard health care
centres, a poor economy, an absence of
self-sufficiency and independence as well
as a lack of attention to women’s health
issues by families. This is only compounded
by the extremely high illiteracy rates among
women. This situation exists despite national
and international laws that declare access to
health care services as a woman’s right.
Violence against women
In addition to the problems women face
in health and education, other serious
and complex problems exist such as
forced marriages, family violence, rape
and the exclusion of women from social
and political activities that affect their
lives. The majority of women, in both
rural and urban areas, are faced with
family violence.
Domestic violence against women not
only has serious physical and mental
consequences but also provokes other
grave problems in Afghan society
including self-mutulation, suicide,
escaping from one’s family, forced
sex work and addiction. Despite the
seriousness of this issue, substantial
actions have not been taken to tackle
violence against women.
Forced marriages
Forced marriages constitute another
serious problem for women in Afghanistan
and are exercised in different forms.
This includes being used as a method
of settling feuds (badal), as a threat for
payment of an ample dowry, as a means
of seeking underage marriage, and in the
event of unwanted pregnancy.
Widows are considered to be heritage
and are not allowed to marry another
man willingly in many areas, leaving them
vulnerable to either forced marriage or
alienation from society. Studies concerning
forced marriage attribute these practices
to cultural tradition, customs and a lack
of family awareness due to poverty and
illiteracy. Rape is another problem
that exists in Afghanistan for women.
It has been committed more frequently
and most notoriously in recent years by
armed Afghan men.
Despite the multiple challenges facing
Afghanistan, remarkable gains have been
made in women’s rights over the past
decade. Since the 2001 fall of the Taliban
regime, Afghanistan has made important
strides in promoting women’s rights,
the protection of women and girls, and
the participation of women in decisionmaking processes.
Equality between men and women is
mandated by the country’s Constitution.
Special measures have resulted in a
Parliament with 28 per cent female
“
representation, as well as 2.7 million girls
returning to school. These are incredible
achievements, bearing in mind that
Afghanistan was a very different country
for women and girls a mere 13 years ago.
Afghanistan has
come a long way.
But these gains must be
protected. Women’s rights
continue to be violated…
Afghanistan has come a long way. But
these gains must be protected. Women’s
rights continue to be violated, female
officials are being targeted and killed,
and their legal protection is under threat.
It is imperative that women’s rights
and empowerment are prioritised in the
coming period of transition. Despite these
major achievements, women remain
one of the most marginalised segments
of the Afghan population.
There are concerns about a possible
regression in the hard-earned rights
achieved. Despite a robust legal framework
regarding women’s rights, female Afghanis
still suffer widespread discriminatory
cultural practices such as child marriage
and limited access to public life, especially
in exercising their right to education and
participation in the formal labour force
and the political sphere.
There are concerns
about a possible regression
in the hard-earned
rights achieved.
Despite a robust
legal framework
regarding women’s
rights, female
Afghanis still suffer
widespread discriminatory
cultural practices…
Recent targeted killings and intimidation of
high-level female government officials and
activists also raises fears about the future
for Afghan women. Such incidents
still remain largely underreported
because of the associated stigma.
The prevailing insecurity and weak
rule of law have further hampered
women’s access to justice.
In Afghanistan, attacks against women
and girls have increased at a frightening
pace. In 2012, female casualties increased
by 20 per cent despite a decrease in overall
violence, and by 61 per cent in 2013
(See works of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,
Executive Director of UN Women, 2013).
When girls attending school or women
leaders in ministries and Parliament are
attacked, it threatens the right of all
women to a public life and the potential
to occupy leadership roles.
In the end, a political solution has to
be developed based on the Afghan
Constitution and the promotion of human
rights, especially women’s rights. The path
towards a prosperous future cannot be
accomplished if women are not recognised
and integrated into society.
Policy in Focus
13
Subjective Well-being:
Future Female Happiness
by Marcelo Neri, Secretariat of Strategic Affairs (SAE) and Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA)
In the last few years, women have
brought about one of the greatest—
if not the greatest—changes in
recent human history. The cultural and
economic revolution related to female
empowerment has affected a sizeable
share of the world’s countries. Brazil, has
witnessed the election of its first female
President as well as a growing number
of women occupying key positions in
different areas of the federal government.
Such achievements have established role
models for younger generations of women.
The National Surveys of Household
Sampling (PNAD, Pesquisas Nacionais de
Amostras a Domicílios) conducted during
the last decade have shown a marked
reduction of per capita income inequality
in Brazil. Poverty is less affected by a
smaller gender wage gap, since poverty
is measured by per capita family income.
However, the narrowing of the gender
wage gap signals significant progress made
by women vis-à-vis the labour market and
its effect on their earned income.
Trends and what they
mean for the future of women
From the standpoint of individual income
generation, income improvements
have been observed in Brazil among
traditionally excluded groups, such as the
black and pardo populations, as well as
people from the northeast, those living
in slums, the countryside, and women.
Women’s individual income levels have
risen 38 per cent, against a 16 per cent
rise for men. Despite these auspicious
results for women, a report on inequality
over a decade in Brazil (2011) shows
that the controlled gender income gap
(controlled for education, regions and
urban/rural areas of residence) was not
reduced, despite having dropped for all
the aforementioned excluded groups,
in relation to their respective and more
included reference groups.
Looking at Brazil’s Monthly Employment
Survey (PME) data for the 2009 to 2011
14
period, similar changes in individual labour
income were not observed. Women’s
income increased by 18.2 per cent during
this period, pari passu, with men’s income
(18.4 per cent). If we accumulate the
changes observed between 2001 and 2011
through PNAD and PME, individual income
gains of 63.1 per cent for women and 37.4
per cent for men can be concluded.
In short, how do we describe the changes
in the world of women? First of all, women
have led the way in the education revolution.
In 1996, the average education level
attained by women in Brazil overtook
that attained by men, for those 25 years
of age and above.
Brazil has focused its social policies
overwhelmingly on women treating
them preferentially as beneficiaries over
men —in the case of Bolsa Família, in 91
per cent of cases, the money is transferred
to women in an effort, to try to raise the
likelihood that funds will reach their children.
Women’s non-labour income—that is,
income from Bolsa Família, retirement and
pension schemes—essentially everything
that does not encompass labour, overtook
that of men in 2006.
Happiness
To what extent do these changes affect
the prospects of improving women’s lives?
Literature on happiness has addressed
this issue by using subjective indicators,
through direct questions. Micro-data from
the 2006 Gallup World Poll, which applied
the same questionnaire in 132 countries,
can be used as such.
One of the advantages of these indicators,
unlike the concepts of income per
capita, is the fact that individual changes
experienced by and produced by women
can be captured. Another interesting
aspect of the data produced through
such a poll is that women from different
countries can be analyzed within the
context of women worldwide.
More specifically, one is able to address
questions such as: On a life satisfaction
scale of 0 to 10, who expects to be happier,
men or women? Which countries are the
most optimistic about the future?
With regard to countries, a future
happiness scale by gender and the
differences between men and women are
presented in Table 1. The Index of Future
Happiness (IFH) by gender presents the
extreme points of the future happiness
scale. It also serves as a comparative
platform to evaluate happiness across the
BRICS member states (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa) and countries
currently facing economic challenges
within Europe, incorporated in a sample of
countries that reached rankings positions
multiples of five in the overall population
happiness ranking.
Who are happier,
Brazilian men or Brazilian women?
In Brazil, women seem to be happier
than men in terms of future happiness
(8.98 for women and 8.56 for men) and
present happiness (6.73 for women and
6.54 for men), but not in regards to past
happiness (5.43 for women and 5.86 for
men). This suggests a reversal of relative
positions, as we move forward in time.
Note that Brazilian men and women boast
the highest levels of future happiness in
their respective categories, vis-à-vis all
other 132 countries surveyed. One must,
however, be careful to note the extent
to which the differences are statistically
different from zero.
Gender and geography
Age and demographic composition are
seen to affect levels of life satisfaction,
particularly future happiness. As such,
geography or regional differences rather,
are variables that should be controlled
for, as well as city size (large, medium and
small cities and rural areas).
To observe how the difference between
men and women changes from country
“
The changes
in the lives of Brazilian
women have been
the result of a focus on
education and on work,
as well as being the
preferential focus
of social policies.
Brazilian men and women
boast the highest levels
of future happiness.
Source: Centre for Social Policies (CPS)/FGV, based on micro-data from the 2006 Gallup World Poll.
to country, a variant with the interactive
variables of country and gender was
used. This difference-in-difference model
allowed for the measure of gender ratios
by country.
In short, Brazilians can not only be
considered to be the happiest people in
the world in regards to future happiness
for men and women, but also in regards to
the gender differences that favour women.
Furthermore, despite any controlling of
observable characteristics, no country
possesses higher female future happiness
levels than Brazil.
The changes in the lives of Brazilian
women have been the result of a focus on
education and on work, as well as being
the preferential focus of social policies.
Moreover, the relative distance, favouring
women, grows as data is examined in a
chronological order, which may suggest
continued empowerment of women, and
their status in Brazilian society in the
years to come.
Neri, M.C. (2011). A Nova Classe Média:
O Lado Brilhante da Base da Pirâmide.
São Paulo, Editora Saraiva, 312 pp.
Policy in Focus
15
Making the NREGA more Gender Responsive:
Reflections from the Field
by Subhalakshmi Nandi and Rebecca Reichmann Tavares, UN Women India MCO1
The National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (NREGA) was enacted
by the Parliament of India in 2005.
The passing of this law was as significant
as the movements that lobbied hard for
it, and was the first ever legislation of its
kind in the world, guaranteeing wage
employment to the most vulnerable
people. It was enacted at a time when
there was strong political will from a
newly elected government, the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) in its first term,
and at a time of a vibrant nation-wide
call for this legislation from workers’ and
farmers’ movements. NREGA was seen by
some as a timely corrective measure by the
Indian State, which, despite its long legacy
of commitment to economic development
with social justice, had adopted a model
of economic growth that had continued to
marginalise and ignore those worst off and
fuel inequalities over the past two decades.
The right to work has been enshrined in
the (post-1950) Indian Constitution in
various ways shapes and forms. The state
of Maharashtra has had an enriching
experience running an ‘employment
guarantee scheme’ (EGS) which was
the outcome of a struggle for protection
from poverty and unemployment that
began during the massive drought of
1970-1973. Maharashtra’s Employment
Guarantee Act (1979) provided guaranteed
employment to all adults throughout the
year in public works involving unskilled
manual work with timely wage payment,
and encouraged the creation of productive
16
assets. As guaranteed employment and
universality were the cornerstone of
this Act, it outlived governments and
managed to address destitution. It did
this by enabling survival and food security,
bringing about social inclusion, ensuring
institutional accountability and increasing
the ‘bargaining power’ of poor people,
especially the most vulnerable such as
women belonging to Scheduled
Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST)
communities (Right to Food, undated).
Almost 30 years later, the NREGA was
enacted, again due to pressure from
people’s movements. In a country
such as India, where 93 per cent of the
workforce is informally employed, 79 per
cent of women workers in rural areas are
employed via agriculture, and earn about
50-75 per cent of the wages that men earn
(Saxena, 2012), and of whom about 81 per
cent belong to marginalised communities
(ILO, 2010), the right to guaranteed
employment was (and is) bound to have
huge implications. It was also a context in
which large numbers of landless labourers
were forced to survive on a daily wage
rate of less than US$0.80. NREGA (later
renamed the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA
or MGNREGA) came with a promise of
guaranteeing 100 days of employment
to a family within a range of 5 km of their
residence, based on written or spoken
demand for work. Not only has MGNREGA
created a legal and institutional basis for
the right to work, rights at work, right to
wage parity, and a minimum wage, backed
by strong accountability mechanisms, it
is also beginning to inspire a longer-term
vision of reviving the agricultural sector by
building assets for rural communities and
supporting their livelihoods. It addresses
poverty, deprivation and vulnerability by
providing wage generating employment,
creating assets, strengthening Panchayats2
and activating local mechanisms for social
audit, thereby being both enabling and
protective at the same time.
MGNREGA also offers a ‘way out’ for daily
wage labourers from traditional feudal
structures, which not only offer piecemeal
wage rates but are intrinsically linked
to class and caste-based discrimination;
often ‘bonded’ forms of labour. The law is
particularly significant for women workers
belonging to marginalised communities,
who would otherwise have no access to
just employment opportunities. MGNREGA
provides workers with the opportunity
to be part of governance structures–in
implementation and monitoring, in
ensuring administrative transparency and
accountability, through the provision of
social audits and the practice of appointing
worksite supervisors (‘mates’).
However there have been some accounts
of the MGNREGA not matching up to the
Maharashtra Act. The national legislation
was a departure from the universal
right to guaranteed employment, as the
number of days was limited to 100, and
what essentially is an individual right of
all adults was reduced to a household
entitlement, thereby becoming a barrier
for women’s participation in its very
design. Whether the individual, rather
than the household, could be the unit
of entitlement is not a question that
policymakers nor workers’ movements
took up, and was not debated enough
even among feminists (Nandi, 2011).
Nevertheless, MGNREGA continues to be
the government’s flagship programme in
fulfilling the right to work. It is the largest
of its kind in the world, reaching out to
an unprecedented number of poor
people in rural areas.
Women’s access to and
participation in MGNREGA
The scale and significance of the
MGNREGA phenomenon is huge.
In 2012–2013, a total of over 48 million
households benefitted from employment
under MGNREGA, of which 52 per cent
were women, 22 per cent Dalits,3 and
17 per cent tribal. While there is a lot of
research examining the implementation
of MGNREGA entitlements, there is very
little work on understanding its gender
outcomes and structural issues. Perhaps
this accounts for the regional disparities.
While women’s participation in the state
of Kerala is as high as 94 per cent, it is only
19 per cent in the state of Uttar Pradesh
(Government of India 2010). The difference
between states in the north and south
can, to some extent, be explained by
the long-standing institutional base of
women, in the form of women’s groups,
which have enabled women to build on
collective strength and bargaining power
to negotiate for decent work. Furthermore,
state support and initiatives such as the
Kudumbashree programme of Kerala,
which has strong linkages with Panchayati
Raj Institutions (PRIs), has also been
instrumental (Muraleedharan, 2012).
mothers, elderly women, and those with
disabilities. Sub-groups of Dalit women,
such as Musahar4 and Muslim women
who are among the poorest, often find
themselves completely out of the purview
of MGNREGA. A lack of awareness about
the Act, about its history, vision and
provisions, sometimes makes MGNREGA
seem like a ‘dole’ as opposed to a right.
Dalit Women’s Livelihood
Accountability Initiative (DWLAI)
To address some of these gaps, the UN
Women Fund for Gender Equality (FGE)
supported the Dalit Women Livelihoods
Initiative (DWLAI), a project that was
undertaken with Dalit women of Andhra
Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh from 2010
to 2012, to bring their perspective into
social accountability mechanisms
as part of MGNREGA implementation.
The project was implemented by
Gender at Work, along with grassroots
partner organisations in eight districts
of Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.
This article is based on the lessons from
the Uttar Pradesh experience of Gender
at Work, across 69 Panchayats of five
districts, implemented by four local
organisations—Lok Samiti, Parmarth
Sewa Sansthan, Sahajani Shiksha Kendra
(SSK) and Vanangana. The project aimed
at increasing Dalit women’s participation
in MGNREGA and employed a threefold
strategy of increasing access, participation
and enhancing transparency and
accountability. This project helped to
demonstrate that, where facilitated,
women have actively accessed and
participated meaningfully in MGNREGA,
while being empowered socially,
economically and politically (Ojha, 2012).
In Uttar Pradesh, women’s participation
in MGNREGA has continuously remained
below par. The geographical areas of the
project intervention and state context are
characterised as backward with high levels
of impoverishment and marginalisation,
low social and economic indicators and a
physical climate and terrain which is dry,
arid and harsh. Women’s participation,
especially Dalit women’s participation,
is beleaguered with the same structural
problems of caste, class and gender.
In addition, women’s engagement with
PRIs, which is the key formal institution
related to MGNREGA implementation,
especially in planning and other decisionmaking processes, was negligible.
Thus, the project sought to close the
gap that existed between legislative
guarantees and implementation at the
ground level. A glimpse of the results
achieved in the project is shown in Table 2.
Some initiatives were piloted to promote
the participation and leadership of
Experience shows that in states such as
Uttar Pradesh women do not have the same
opportunities in accessing MGNREGA as
men. This is partly because the entitlement
stipulated in MGNREGA is contingent on
the household. Therefore, MGNREGA work
(just like intra-household distribution of
nutrition, education, assets and income) is
prioritised for the ‘primary breadwinner’—
i.e. men. Another factor limiting women’s
participation is that provisions such as
crèches remain unfulfilled in most, if not
all, states. These are the gendered impacts
which affect women’s access to and
participation in MGNREGA.
Moreover, women are not a homogenous
group. Marginalised women are
confronted with triple hurdles of gender,
class and caste in securing work under
MGNREGA. For example, single and
elderly women are marginalised because
work is mostly allocated to couples or
families through a group system.
The physical nature of MGNREGA work
also discriminates against breast feeding
Policy in Focus
17
women under MGNREGA, as workers,
mates (worksite supervisors), and as
community leaders, working closely with
PRIs. For instance, Lok Samiti’s project
aimed at enabling access to MNREGA for
Musahar and Muslim women by getting
women from these communities Job
Cards and work for the first time since
the implementation of the Act, and
enabled their participation in mainstream
workers’ unions. This initiative also
sought to break gender and communitybased barriers and stereotypes (e.g. the
perception that Muslim women are not
interested or allowed to do manual work).
Sahajani Shiksha Kendra trained Dalit
women to become ‘mates’. For this they
developed a training module specifically
for semi-literate women. The module
combined perspective-building with
skills development and has been used to
advocate for policy-level interventions to
bring more women into these positions.
This model challenged stereotypes related
to women’s abilities to do ‘technical’ work.
Vanangana initiated an all-women’s work
site—building a large pond—where Dalit
women were involved in all stages of
planning and implementing the work.
This model helped to reduce barriers
related to women’s access to Panchayats,
and government departments, while
promoting women as capable managers
and decision-makers at a large worksite.
The first achievement of the project
was an increase in employment and
income for women, both through access
to employment under MGNREGA, and
through an increase in the number of days
they worked. As Table 2 shows, 13 per cent
of women managed to secure MGNREGA
work for more than 75 days, as compared
to 3 per cent in the baseline. Almost 77
per cent of women surveyed felt that
there had been an improvement in their
economic condition, as they had secured
more working days. A large percentage of
these women claimed that they now spent
their money to avoid hunger, repay small
debts and pay for their children’s education.
The second area of accomplishment was
women’s greater access to and control over
financial resources. Seventy per cent of
women managed to get a bank account in
their name, as compared to 30 per cent in
the baseline. More significantly, 72.4 per
cent of these women are operating the
bank account on their own, as compared
to 53 per cent in the baseline. Access to
economic resources also had a favourable
impact on women’s say in household
decision-making. Nearly all of the women
(98 per cent) said they took greater decisions
about how this money would be used.
This project also helped women trump
gender stereotypes since they had the
opportunity to carry out semi-skilled
and skilled work under this project.
Over the project period about 150 women
across all the project sites were trained as
worksite supervisors (mates). The number
of women that worked as mates increased
from 1.2 per cent to 21 per cent during the
project period, and women also gained
in confidence as a result of doing this
work. They learned to do technical tasks
such as measuring work, filling in ‘muster
rolls’ (attendance registers) etc., which had
traditionally been the domain of powerful
men. Clearly, wages in rural areas have
increased as a result of these changes.
Data from the project (see Table 2) show
there was a rise in wages in non-MGNREGA
work, both in agriculture and non-farm
sectors; and we also see a decline in the
gender gap in wages. All these shifts signal
changes in the lives of the women, and are
indicative of their ‘empowerment journeys’
through challenging dominant power
structures of gender, caste and class
(Patel, Nandi and Khan, 2012).
A joint advocacy consultation by UN
Women and Gender at Work, showcasing
and highlighting the lessons from this
project, contributed to the adoption of
policy recommendations such as the
appointment of women as 50 per cent of
mates for all worksites, identification of
single women for issuing individual Job
Cards, and conducting time and motion
studies to formulate schedules of rates that
are gender-, age- and disability-sensitive.
A letter in this regard was issued by the
Union Minister for Rural Development to all
Chief Ministers to take forward these policy
recommendations from the consultation.
There is no doubt that MGNREGA is a
successful social protection measure for the
most marginalised and excluded members
of society. Within the existing political
economy, the passing of the law was a
huge battle in itself, and so is its day-to-day
18
“
MGNREGA also
offers a ‘way out’ for
daily wage labourers from
traditional feudal structures,
which not
only offered piecemeal
wage rates but are
intrinsically linked to
class and caste-based
discrimination;
often ‘bonded’ forms
of labour.
Photo: World Trade in Commodities: Search for Stability. UN Photo/John Isaac.
implementation. Yet, from the perspective
of its gender-responsiveness, the lessons
of the DWLAI suggest that the mere
enactment of a law is not enough.
A bottom-up paradigm, however, with both
rights-based approaches and empowerment
processes at its core can have desired
outcomes for gender equality. An important
element of the gender perspective in a
human rights framework is the centrality of
‘empowerment’ processes. In the literature
in recent years, ‘rights-based approaches’
and ‘empowerment approaches’ have often
been pitted against each other. Part of the
reason for this is that the interpretation of
these frameworks has been appropriated
by players other than those who created the
discourse (Cornwall, 2007).
Nevertheless, for gender equality
advocates, ‘empowerment’ remains a
critical framework, at the core of which is
an analysis of power (Batliwala, 1993). From
a gender perspective, therefore, rights and
empowerment complement each other.
While rights are “the value framework
that guides intervention”, empowerment
provides the “nuts and bolts for organizing
communities, particularly those with poor
women, around these values and ideas”
(Kapur and Duvvury, 2005).
The DWLAI experience reminds us that in
addition to a ‘protection’ and ‘prevention’
approach, a framework of ‘promotion’
and ‘transformation’ (Jones, 2012) can
again become part of the discourse,
organising and strategising for social
protection in India.
Ojha, Gana Pati (2012): Evaluation of UN
Women Fund for Gender Equality Economic
and Political Empowerment Catalytic Grant
Programme “Dalit Women’s Livelihoods
Accountability Initiative” India. <http://www.
unwomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/
FGE-Programme-Evaluation-Gender-at-WorkDSS-India-2012-EN.pdf> (accessed 18 June 2013).
Batliwala, Srilatha (1993): “Women’s
Empowerment in South Asia:
Concepts and Practices”.
Cornwall, Andrea (2007): “Buzzwords and
Fuzzwords: Deconstructing Development
Discourse”, in Development in Practice, Vol.17,
No.4-5. <http://my.ewb.ca/site_media/
static/attachments/threadedcomments_
threadedcomment/56066/25901768.pdf>.
(accessed 17 June 2013).
Patel, Leena, Nandi, Subhalakshmi and Khan,
Suhela (2012): “Women’s Labour Rights in a
Globalising World – Insights from the Field”,
paper presented at the 54th Annual Conference
of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE).
Government of India: MGNREGA National
Reports 2006-10, published by Ministry
of Rural Development (MoRD).
<http://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/home.aspx>.
(accessed 30 April 2013).
Right to Food Campaign: “A Brief on the
Right to Work:, available at: <http://www.
righttofoodindia.org/rtowork/rtw_briefing.pdf>.
ILO (2010): Women Workers in Agriculture:
Expanding Responsibilities and
Shrinking Opportunities.
Jones, Nicola (2012): “Women’s Empowerment –
The Role of Social Protection”, paper presented at
an Expert Group Meeting on Social Protection in
South East Asia.
Kapur, Aanchal and Nata Duvvury (2005):
“A Rights-based Approach to Realising the
Economic and Social Rights of Poor and
Marginalised Women: A Synthesis of Lessons
Learned”, study published by ICRW.
<http://www.icrw.org/files/publications/ARights-Based-Approach-to-Realizaing-theEconomic-and-Social-Rights-of-Poor-andMarginalized-Women.pdf> (accessed 17 June 2013).
Muraleedharan, Sarada (2012):
“MGNREGS and Kerala – The Untold Story” .
<ftp://ftp.solutionexchange.net.in/public/gen/
cr/res22031301.pdf> (accessed 1 May 2013).
Nandi, Subhalakshmi (2011): “Feminist
Engagement with the ‘Body’ and ‘Labour’ within
‘Mainstream’ Development Discourse, paper
presented at XIII Indian Association for Women’s
Studies Conference at Wardha.
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC,
2011): “Know Your Rights: The Right to
Work”, available at <http://www.nhrc.nic.in/
Documents/Publications/KYR%20Work%20
English.pdf> (accessed 22 January 2014).
Saxena, N. C. (2012): “Women, Land and
Agriculture in Rural India”, published by UN
Women. <http://www.unwomensouthasia.org/
assets/UN_Women_Land_Agriculture_in_Rural_
India.pdf> (accessed 16 June 2013).
1. Dr. Rebecca Reichmann Tavares is the
Representative of UN Women India MCO,
and Subhalakshmi Nandi is the Programme
Specialist, Women’s Economic Empowerment,
UN Women India MCO.
The authors would like to acknowledge the
research assistance provided by Leena Patel
and Suhela Khan for this paper. This paper builds
upon the collective reflections and learnings in
the journey of implementing the Dalit Women
Livelihoods Accountability Initiative (2010-12)
with UN Women’s partner organisation Gender
at Work, and in particular they would like to
acknowledge the local organisations in Uttar
Pradesh – Lok Samiti, Parmarth Samaj Sewi
Sansthan, Sahajani Shiksha Kendra (Nirantar) and
Vanangana – on whose work this paper is based.
2. Constitutionally elected body that is the
unit of the Indian three-tier system of
local self-governance.
3. The term used for the Scheduled
Caste community.
4. One of the most marginalised Scheduled
Caste communities of Northern India.
Policy in Focus
19
Domestic Work:
Women’s Work, Decent Work?
by Malte Luebker, International Labour Organization (ILO) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific1
They often go unnoticed, but their
numbers are huge: worldwide, more
than 52.5 million women and men work
as domestic workers, according to a
recent report by the International Labour
Organization (ILO, 2013a). This is more than
the total number of people employed in
some large countries such as Viet Nam,
Mexico, Nigeria and Germany. This figure is
a conservative estimate, based on official
statistics; many more have probably gone
unaccounted for. Although some men work
for households, often as drivers, gardeners
or guards, the 43.6 million women
domestic workers outnumber them by far.
Domestic work is, therefore, an occupation
that is almost entirely performed by
women, and for many, it is their main or
only entry point into the labour market.
Globally, the number of women domestic
workers has grown by 14.8 million since
1995 (ILO, 2013a). In Latin America, one
in four women with a wage job is now
employed as a domestic worker. In the
Middle East, every third woman with a
paid job is a domestic worker, and globally
one in 13 women who earn a wage do so
by working for another household. For
these women, paid employment means
taking care of their employers’ households
or looking after their children (ILO, 2013a).
Earning a wage is a step towards economic
independence and empowerment.
However, this only holds true when such
wage-generating jobs are decent. For
domestic workers, decent work is often
still elusive. For many domestic workers,
working conditions are often poor, their
wages low, their hours long, and their jobs
precarious. Many employers still regard
those who work for them not as workers
but as mere ‘helpers’ and consider their
recruitment as an act of charity. Likewise,
many governments exclude domestic
workers from the scope of the labour laws
that protect other workers.
This leaves many domestic workers without
the basic rights that most of us take for
20
granted such as an entitlement to a weekly
day off, which does not apply to 44.9
per cent of the world’s domestic workers
(see Figure 1). Likewise, while almost all
governments set a limit to the normal
weekly hours of work within their labour
laws, some 56.6 per cent of all domestic
workers cannot rely on such a protection,
often working around the clock, especially
if they live with their employer.
They often do so for exceptionally low
wages and, to make matters worse, in
42.6 per cent of all cases they are not even
entitled to the minimum wage. Given
that most domestic workers are women,
maternity protection is another crucial
concern. Under national laws, just under
two thirds of all female domestic workers
are entitled to maternity leave, although
not all are eligible to receive maternity
cash benefits.
Many domestic workers (currently no
precise numbers are available) are migrant
workers who have left their country for the
promise of a better job elsewhere. As foreign
workers, sometimes with an undocumented
legal status, they face additional
vulnerabilities. In many countries their work
permit is tied to an individual employer,
meaning that they are vulnerable to or
can become dependent on exploitative
situations, especially if they have taken
on debt to pay for a recruitment fee. Even
where regional blocs such as the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are
promoting the free flow of labour, they
usually focus on a narrow set of highly
skilled professionals, excluding domestic
workers, even though this group accounts
for a far greater share of labour migration.
Protections vary greatly between the
world’s regions. The 21.5 million domestic
workers in Asia, and their at least 2.1
million counterparts in the Middle East, are
generally the least protected. As of 2010, a
mere 3 per cent of Asia’s domestic workers
could turn to labour laws to claim a weekly
day of rest, and only 1 per cent could rely
on a statutory limit on their working hours.
A guaranteed minimum wage only covers
domestic workers in Hong Kong, the
Philippines and some Indian states.
Far from enjoying maternity benefits,
foreign domestic workers in Singapore
face deportation if they become pregnant.
Across the Middle East, basic labour
protection for domestic workers is almost
entirely absent from national labour laws
of 2010—a shortcoming in protection that
affects mainly migrant domestic workers,
who have to rely on weaker safeguards
offered by the standard employment
contracts that are common in the region.
Other regions, namely Latin America with
its 19.6 million domestic workers, show
that better legal protection is feasible. All
but a few of the region’s domestic workers
are at least in part covered by labour laws
and are hence entitled to annual leave, a
minimum wage and a day of weekly rest.
Three quarters are protected by a limit
on weekly working hours, which in some
cases demands longer hours than that of
other workers. Nine out of 10 domestic
workers in Latin America are, at least
on paper, entitled to maternity benefits.
Domestic workers in Africa, Eastern Europe,
the Commonwealth of Independent States
and developed countries are at least in
part covered by basic protections.
Do such rights matter for the reality of
women’s work, or are they a dead letter, as
some critics argue? Granted, compliance
is often weak, and enforcement needs to
be strengthened. Only a third of Brazil’s
domestic workers are enrolled under the
social security scheme.
But this is a huge improvement over the
mid-1990s and much better than the
blanket exclusion in many other countries.
The wages of Brazil’s domestic workers
have doubled in real terms over the same
period, largely due to substantial increases
in minimum wages, which, unlike in most
Asian countries, also cover domestic workers.
Such basic labour rights not only establish
entitlements but also provide a sense of
dignity and change public perceptions.
When South Africa introduced a minimum
wage for domestic workers in 2002, labour
economists were left wondering why
households started to pay higher wages
despite the absence of any credible
enforcement mechanism. It turned out
that the new regulations themselves
had altered perceptions and shifted the
balance of bargaining power in favour
of domestic workers, encouraging
households to increase wages and sign
employment contacts (Dinkelman and
Ranchhod, 2010). In the Indian states
that recently extended minimum wage
coverage to domestic workers, employers
and workers alike were often confused
about the precise rate they should apply.
However, what really mattered was that
the state suddenly recognised domestic
workers as workers with rights, something
that had not occurred to them before.
Since it was adopted in June 2011, the ILO’s
Domestic Workers Convention No. 189
has set in motion such a re-thinking on a
global scale. The Convention starts from
the consideration that “domestic work
continues to be undervalued and invisible
and is mainly carried out by women and
girls”, setting out a new global standard for
the minimum protections and rights that
domestic workers should enjoy. So far, 12
countries2 have ratified the Convention and
are thus committed under international law
to implement these minimum standards.
In many other countries the ratification
process is underway.
Denying domestic workers basic labour
rights is no longer acceptable. Countries
have begun to act, some of them taking
small, others bigger, steps in the right
direction. For instance, Thailand has
ordered employers to give their domestic
workers a day off on public holidays,
Singapore now grants such workers a
weekly day of rest, and Namibia is setting
a minimum wage for domestic workers. In
Bahrain, the new Labour Code includes
domestic workers in a number of its
provisions. The United States has extended
the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum
wage and overtime protections to the
nearly 2 million direct care workers who
help elderly or disabled people in their
homes.3 In the Philippines,
Source: ILO (2013a).
the new Domestic Workers Act or ‘Batas
Kasambahay’ sets out detailed rules and
protections for domestic workers.
But while labour rights are being
strengthened for many domestic workers,
there are some worrying signs at the
other end of the spectrum. Many women
and, indeed, girls are still working in
unacceptable forms of domestic work,
such as forced labour and child labour.
Child labour has been ostracised across
the world, with global statistics showing
a steady downward trend since the
turn of the century. But contrary to this
development, the latest ILO estimates
show that the number of children
engaged in domestic work has grown from
approximately 10.6 million to 11.5 million
between 2008 and 2012, and two thirds of
them are girls (ILO, 2013b). All too often, a
start in domestic service at an early age will
deprive girls and boys of education and a
chance to find a better job later on in life.
Policy in Focus
21
By its very nature, forced labour is even
more difficult to measure than domestic
work and child labour. However, it is
believed that there are between 19.5
million and 22.3 million victims of forced
labour worldwide, the majority of whom
are women. While state-imposed forced
labour (10 per cent) and forced sexual
exploitation (22 per cent) both play a big
role, more than two thirds of all victims
of forced labour exploitation are found in
the private economy, with domestic work
featuring as one of the main perpetrating
sectors (ILO, 2012). Horrendous reports
of gross violations of domestic workers’
human rights show that much remains to
be done until domestic work is decent work
for each and every woman engaged in it.
Dinkelman. T. and V. Ranchhod (2010). ‘Evidence
on the impact of minimum wage laws in an
informal sector: Domestic workers in South
Africa’. SALDRU Working Paper Series, No. 44.
Cape Town, University of Cape Town.
ILO (2012). ILO global estimate of forced labour:
results and methodology. Geneva, International
Labour Organization.
ILO (2013a). Domestic workers across the world:
global and regional statistics and the extent of
legal protection. Geneva, International
Labour Organization.
ILO (2013b). Marking progress against child
labour — Global estimates and trends 2000–2012.
Geneva, International Labour Organization.
1. The views expressed in this article are those of
the author and do not necessarily reflect those
of the International Labour Organization.
2. These are Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany,
Guyana, Italy, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Paraguay, the
Philippines, South Africa and Uruguay.
3. See: <http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/
whd/WHD20131922.htm>.
An Impact Assessment:
the Formalisation of Domestic Work in Brazil
by Edson Domingues and Kênia de Souza, Cedeplar, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)/UN Women Brazil
Domestic workers, a group consisting
mostly of women, have benefitted
significantly from real income increases
in Brazil. Although salaries for domestic
work have increased more than those for
other work categories, the average wage
is still far removed from that of other
occupations. It is necessary to understand
the particularities of domestic work in
Brazil to be able to develop specific public
policies aimed at promoting the wellbeing of this portion of the population.
to incorporate specific data regarding the
consumption of domestic services, thus
allowing both the distribution of these
services by household type as well as the
share of domestic workers in each income
decile to be mapped.1
This enabled the location of the effects of
the income gains achieved by domestic
workers in households under different
economic conditions to be extracted. This
demonstrated that although the income
per worker was higher in the higher deciles,
In light of this, Domingues and Souza
(2012) sought to estimate the impacts
of increased wages paid to domestic
workers through simulations with a
computable general equilibrium (CGE)
model. The results of macroeconomic and
sector variables were drawn from two
direct effects: the increase in the price
of domestic work and domestic workers’
income gains.
A general equilibrium model computed
with recursive dynamics was employed,
including details of 117 consumer
products, 60 sectors and 10 representative
families distributed by income decile.
The model was developed by Cedeplar
(a regional planning and development
centre of the state of Minas Gerais)
(Domingues et al., 2011). It was adapted
22
Source: Created in house, based on data from POF 2002/2003 (IBGE, 2012a).
the importance of income derived from
domestic work decreased correspondingly,
reaching 9.8 per cent of the total income
in the first decile, and only 0.19 per cent
in the 10th decile (Figure 1). Therefore,
any increase in income from domestic
work is understood to have progressive
redistributive effects, as it transfers income
from the higher to the lower deciles.
Under the framework of general equilibrium
models, and based on the macroeconomic
scenario observed between 2005 and 2011,
a simulation was conducted with three
components, in which:
i. the number of domestic
workers remained fixed;
ii. the price of domestic labour grows
by 10.95 per cent per a year; and
iii. the income of domestic workers
increases annually by 10.95 per
cent—distributed according to the
participation of these workers
in each income decile.2
The simulations allowed for the
calculation of the effects these changes
in domestic services had on production,
employment, wages and consumption in
the Brazilian economy. As such, the results
obtained showed that 0.58 per cent of
the cumulative GDP growth occurring
between 2006 and 2011 (baseline
scenario)—or about R$19 billion at 2011
prices—could be attributed to the rising
incomes of domestic workers, despite the
rise in the costs of these services. The result
on aggregate employment was a growth
of 0.77 per cent, or about 630,000 jobs.
The increase in the income of domestic
workers and the real income increases in
the economy were reflected in the 1.90 per
cent increase in household consumption,
benefiting mainly the lower income deciles,
as they received most of the earnings
attributed to domestic work. Some 6.61
per cent of the growth in real consumption
in the first decile between 2006 and 2011
could be attributed to the effects triggered
by the increased income for domestic
work, despite the higher price of these
services. This figure decreases as we move
through the deciles, reaching 0.13 per cent
in the wealthiest decile.
Therefore, as a result of rising incomes and
consumption, as well as their multiplier
effects on the economy, there was an
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
increase in production—mainly of durable
consumer goods and services, such as
home appliances and health services.
Monetary welfare gains amounted to R$25
billion between 2006 and 2011, and were
distributed progressively through the
income deciles. According to Table 1,
in the first decile, cash transfers from
social welfare programmes were more
than twice the monthly income earned
by these families.
On the production side, the sectors
adjusted to income and price shocks,
changing the production total and the
use of production factors (labour).
The increase in household income
ultimately displaced part of the production
factors to the sectors associated with
household consumption, which increased
production and the use of labour.
goods industry’ and the ‘capital goods
industry’, experienced a negative trend
in terms of production and employment.
Such changes were made clear by the
composition of household consumption—
in particular, by the consumption
structure of the lower deciles, where
the consumption of subsistence
goods was high. Thus, the economic impact of
increased income among domestic
workers, a professional class consisting
predominantly of women, suggests a path
forwards for public policies.
The value added to job categories
traditionally relegated to the margins
of Brazil’s economy improves the living
conditions not only of the low-income
population but of the economy as a whole,
while contributing to the improvement of
income distribution.
The effect of rising prices was negative for
all activities. It was, however, offset by the
increase in income, resulting in a positive
impact on sectors such as ‘consumer
goods’, with a 0.86 per cent increase in
production and a 2.31 per cent increase
in employment in the sector.
Domingues, E.P. and K.B. Souza (2012).
‘Avaliação do impacto da formalização do
trabalho doméstico’, IPC-IG Working Paper,
No. 96. Brasília, International Policy Centre
for Inclusive Growth.
The sectors that benefited most included
the ‘food industry’, ‘services’, ‘durable
consumer goods’ and ‘agriculture
and livestock’, while others such as
the ‘extraction industry’, the ‘intermediate
Domingues, E.P., D.F. Cardoso, K.B. Souza,
G.P. Motta, T.C. Carvalho, F.S. Santiago, A.S.
Magalhães and A.A. Betarelli Junior (2012).
‘Crescimento, emprego e produção setorial:
efeitos da desoneração de tributos sobre
a folha de salários no Brasil’, Texto para
discussão, No. 456. Belo Horizonte, CEDEPLAR.
Policy in Focus
23
IBGE (2012a). ‘Pesquisa de Orçamento Familiar’.
Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia
e Estatística, <http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/
estatistica/pesquisas/pesquisa_resultados.php?id_
pesquisa=25> (acessed 16 December 2013).
IBGE (2012b). ‘Pesquisa Mensal do Emprego’.
Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia
e Estatística, <http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/
estatistica/pesquisas/pesquisa_resultados.php?id_
pesquisa=38> (acessed 16 December 2013).
1. In the households, 1.74 per cent of household
consumption pertains to domestic services.
Most of this amount is consumed by households
in the upper income deciles, as expected: about
80 per cent of consumption falls into the ninth
and tenth deciles.
2. The figures used were drawn from the data
observed in the Monthly Employment Surveys
from 2005 to 2011 (IBGE, 2012b).
Social Transfers: Strengthening Girls’ and
Women’s Potential as Protagonists in Development
by Nicola Jones, Overseas Development Institute1 and Maxine Molyneux, University College London2
Social transfers—transfers of small
amounts of cash or assets to impoverished
households3—are heralded as one of
the great success stories of international
development. Various programmes reach
more than three quarters of a billion
people in low- and middle-income
countries today and are recognised for
providing critical support to families
to meet basic consumption needs and
improve access to key services (World Bank,
2009; DFID, 2011; UNICEF, 2012).
More contentious, however, is the
extent to which they have meaningfully
empowered girls and women, enabling
them to take up new roles in their
households and communities.
Targeting girls and
women makes economic sense
Pioneering cash transfer programmes
in Latin America (such as Mexico’s
Oportunidades and Brazil’s Bolsa Família)
have attracted considerable attention not
least because they put the transfer directly
into women’s hands, drawing on a strong
evidence base that shows that women
are more likely than men to invest
additional income in family welfare
(e.g. Hoddinott and Haddad, 1995;
Quisumbing and Maluccio, 2000).
While these programmes are primarily
concerned with improving children’s
school attendance and health, women
have reported that access to cash or assets
in their own name not only gives them
welcome support to their role as caregivers
24
but also has the potential to strengthen
their bargaining power and position in
the household (Hossain and Blackie, 2011;
Holmes and Jones, 2013).
Research undertaken as part of Egypt’s
conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot,
which focuses on mothers and femaleheaded households, found that women
had increased their capability to ‘direct
their lives’ (Pathways of Women’s
Empowerment, 2010: 2), while women in
the occupied Palestinian territories in a
beneficiary perception study emphasised
that the programme had freed them up
from the constant surveillance of their
male relatives, not just husbands but also
brothers and brothers-in-law
(Jones et al., 2013).
(both CCTs) paid higher benefits for girls,
to tackle their disadvantages in enrolment
(Fiszbein and Schady, 2009).
Malawi’s Zomba cash transfer experiment
also focused on reducing adolescent girls’
education drop-outs and risky behaviours.
In this programme, drop-out rates at
baseline fell from 11 per cent to 6 per
cent within the first year, with significant
increases in re-enrolment rates among
previous drop-outs.
There were also positive effects on
the sexual and marital decisions of
beneficiaries, including declining rates of
early marriage and adolescent pregnancy
(Baird et al., 2009).
In recent years there has been greater
attention within social transfer
programmes to integrate design features
to enhance women’s empowerment
and gender-equitable outcomes as well
as to support their role as mothers.
Key objectives include the following:
Supporting women’s access
to reproductive health services
Reproductive health is an area where
progress for girls and women has
been much more limited, with serious
consequences for their well-being and
future opportunities, as highlighted in the
2013 State of the World’s Population Report:
Motherhood in Childhood.
Reducing gender disparities in education
The importance of education in providing
a vital route to empowerment (personal,
social, economic) is well established and is
acknowledged to be “foundational for all
the other development goals”.4
While earlier cash transfer programmes
focused predominantly on children’s
health, CCTs are also increasingly providing
pregnant women and new mothers with
medical check-ups and nutritional and
reproductive health advice.6
In recognition of this, a number of CCTs
have sought to address the gender gaps
in education.5 Mexico’s Oportunidades
and Turkey’s Social Risk Mitigation Project
In Haryana State in India, the Apni
Beti Apna Dhan programme provides
financial incentives for female births to
stem the sex ratio imbalance and for
delaying the marriage of girls until the
age of 18 (ICRW, 2011).
Facilitating access
to complementary services
While social protection programme
objectives are broadening, there is also a
clear recognition that programmes need
to strengthen linkages to complementary
services and programmes (Holmes and
Jones, 2013).
In Brazil, Chile and Colombia there is a
commitment to intersectoral cooperation
through CCTs (Soares and Silva, 2010).
A single registry supports the integration of
households into programmes dealing with
food security, housing, banking, credit, and
judicial services.
In Bangladesh, asset transfer programmes
promote women’s savings accounts and
aim to link women to credit sources as they
graduate from the programme.
Similar bridges to credit schemes are
also being scaled up in Palestine’s cash
transfer programme. In other contexts,
programme designers have also sought
to address key social vulnerabilities that
undermine women’s agency, including
providing access to domestic and sexual
violence prevention and protection
services (Colombia and Chile).
Providing skills training, knowledge
and raising awareness about rights
Programmes that treat poverty and
vulnerability as multidimensional have also
sought to go beyond risk management
through income support and by
developing women’s skills and knowledge
through training and awareness-raising.
Asset transfer programmes in Bangladesh
and CCTs in Egypt, Ghana, Peru and the
Philippines promote regular interactions
between social workers and beneficiaries
to increase women’s knowledge of their
legal rights, parental responsibilities and
skills, health and nutrition.
The more enlightened of these include
men in some of the education sessions,
recognising that addressing gender
inequalities needs to involve men equally.
Promoting women’s
community participation
While the focus of social transfers has
largely been at the household level, there is
growing interest in the spillover effects in
the community. Qualitative research
indicates that with increased cash women
are more likely to participate in family
and community events (helped by having
enough funds to cover new clothes or gifts
essential to inclusion) and are also deemed
more creditworthy by friends and peers
(Jones et al., 2013). More formally, women’s
social inclusion by acquiring citizenship
rights has been tackled by several cash
transfer programmes (e.g. in Brazil, Ghana,
Peru) that make participation conditional
on obtaining ID registration, which is
necessary to access, other social services
and political rights.
These programmes and others in subSaharan Africa, including Ghana, Kenya
and Mozambique, encourage women to
be involved in leadership roles, either as
community facilitators or on beneficiary
welfare committees. All-women groups,
such as Mothers Clubs, can also provide
secure spaces for women to get together
to share interests and concerns.
Key challenges remain
While there is evidence that social transfer
programmes have enhanced women’s
agency in some contexts, many still take
too little account of gender relations,
women’s needs and their dual roles as
carers and income generators (Molyneux,
2006; Waring et al., 2013), (Bradshaw
with Quirós Víquez, 2008), (Chant, 2006).
Moreover, failure to acknowledge, let
alone promote, the productive capacity
of women and their families reduces the
opportunities for beneficiaries to graduate
out of the programme and poverty
(Jenson, 2009; Molyneux, 2007).
With regard to women’s agency,
programmes have often been criticised
for their paternalistic approach to
poverty reduction, where participants,
especially women, are treated as passive
beneficiaries rather than as rights holders
and active citizens.
“
While there is
evidence that
social transfer programmes
have enhanced women’s
agency in some contexts,
many still take too little
account of gender relations,
women’s needs and their
dual roles as carers and
income generators. While
the focus of social transfers
has largely been at the
household level, there
is growing interest in the
spillover effects
in the community.
cycle they will be better able to become
the ‘makers and shapers’ of development
as well as promoters of programming
in closer alignment with their needs
(Cornwall and Gaventa, 2001).
Baird, S. et al. (2009). ‘The Short-Term Impacts of
a Schooling Conditional Cash Transfer Program
on the Sexual Behavior of Young Women’, Policy
Research Working Paper, No. 5089. Washington,
DC, World Bank.
Bradshaw, S with Quirós Víquez, A (2008)
‘Women Beneficiaries or Women Bearing
the Cost? A gendered analysis of the Red de
Protección Social in Nicaragua’, Development
and Change 39.5: 82344
Chant, S. (2006) ‘“The Feminisation of Poverty”
and “the Feminisation of Anti-poverty”
Programmes: Room for Revision?’, Journal of
Development Studies 44.2: 16597
Cornwall, A. and J. Gaventa (2001). From
Users and Choosers to Makers and Shapers:
Repositioning Participation in Social Policy.
Birmingham,, Governance and Social
Development Resource Centre.
DFID (2011). ‘Cash Transfers’, Evidence Paper.
London, Policy Division, Department for
International Development.
There is, however, a fledgling movement
within social transfer programmes, to
integrate social accountability mechanisms,
including grievance mechanisms to
participatory dialogues and social audits,
into programme governance frameworks
(e.g. Ringold et al., 2012).
When women are treated as citizens and
have opportunities to voice their views
throughout the social transfer programme
Fiszbein, A. and N. Schady (2009). Conditional
Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future
Poverty. Washington, DC, World Bank.
Hoddinott, J. and L. Haddad (1995). ‘Does Female
Income Share Influence Household Expenditures?
Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire’, Oxford Bulletin of
Economics and Statistics, 57(1): 77–96
Holmes, R. and N. Jones (2013). Gender and
Social Protection in the Developing World Beyond
Mothers and Safety Nets. London, Zed Books.
Hossain, A. and R. Blackie (2011). Summary of
CLP Output Targets and Expected Gender Access.
Bangladesh, Chars Livelihoods Programme, IML.
Policy in Focus
25
International Center for Research on Women
(2011). Commentary by Gillian Gaynair, 05/26/11.
“Cash Incentive Program Aims to Delay When
Indian Girls Marry” <http://www.icrw.org/media/
news/motivation-prevent-child-marriage>.
Jenson, J. (2009). ‘Lost in Translation: The Social
Investment Perspective and Gender Equality’,
Social Politics, 16(4): 446–483.
Jones, N. et al. (2013). ‘Beneficiary and community
perspectives on the Palestinian National Cash
Transfer Programme’, Country Briefing. London,
Overseas Development Institute.
Molyneux, M. (2006). ‘Mothers at the Service of the
New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades,
Mexico’s Conditional Transfer Program’, Social
Policy and Administration, 40(4): 425–49.
Countries’, Discussion Paper, No. 84. Washington,
DC, Food Consumption and Nutrition Division,
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Ringold, D., A. Holla, M. Koziol and S. Srinivasan
(2012). Citizens and Service Delivery: Assessing
the use of social accountability approaches
in human development. Washington, DC,
International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development/World Bank.
Soares, F.V. and Silva, E. (2010). Conditional Cash
Transfers Programmes and Gender Vulnerabilities?
Case studies for Brazil, Chile and Colombia
Conditional Cash Transfer programmes. Brasília,
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth
and London, Overseas Development Institute.
Molyneux, M. (2007). ‘Change and Continuity in
Social Protection in Latin America: Mothers at the
Service of the State?’, Gender and Development
Programme Paper. No 1. Geneva, UNRISD.
UNICEF (2012). Integrated social protection
systems: enhancing equity for children. New
York, United Nations Children’s Fund, <www.
unicef.org/socialprotection/framework/files/
UNICEF_SPSFramework_whole_doc.pdf>
(accessed 16 December 2013).
Pathways of Women’s Empowerment (2010).
‘What Would a Feminist CCT Programme Look
Like?’, Pathways Middle East Case Study. Brighton,
Institute of Development Studies.
Waring, M., Mukherjee, A., Reid, E. and Shivdas,
M. (2013). Anticipatory Social Protection:
Claiming Dignity and Rights. London:
Commonwealth Secretariat.
Quisumbing, A. and J. Maluccio (2000).
‘Intrahousehold Allocation and Gender Relations:
New Empirical Evidence from Four Developing
World Bank (2009). Agriculture and Rural
Development, Gender in Agriculture: Source book.
Washington, DC, World Bank.
1. Senior Research Fellow in the Social
Development Programme at the
Overseas Development Institute and
lead qualitative researcher for the DFIDfunded Transforming Cash Transfers Project
(transformingcashtransfers.org).
2. Director of the Institute of the Americas,
University College London, and Research
Director of the Transforming Cash
Transfers Project.
3. DFID (2011) includes cash transfers,
public works programmes and asset transfers
under the umbrella category of social
transfer programmes.
4. See: <http://www.unicef.org/mdg/
gender.html>.
5. Interestingly too, and in recognition of
changing dynamics in gender parity in
education, where boys are less likely to attend
school, in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Jamaica,
cash transfers explicitly promote their enrolment
(Fiszbein and Schady, 2009).
6. These include Brazil’s Bolsa Família, Bolivia’s
Bono Juana Azurduy, Egypt’s Ain El-Sira,
Indonesia’s Program Keluarga Harapan, Peru’s
Juntos, the Philippines’ Pantawid Pamilyang
Pilipino Program and Ghana’s Livelihood
Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP).
Evaluation of the Programa Bolsa Família:
a Gender and Race Perspective
by Ana Hermeto, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)
The goal of this article is to identify and
analyse how important the Programa Bolsa
Família (PBF) is in empowering women and
bridging the social and economic gaps
that exist between racial groups in Brazil.
Knowledge about these impacts is scarce
because the programme is not specifically
designed to reduce these disparities, and
because there are few representative
databases available.
Women are the recipients of the PBF cash
transfers, and, in this context, they are
considered responsible for their families
for all intents and purposes. Some of
the potential outcomes of this practice
are direct or indirect impacts (positive
or negative) on women’s bargaining
power, which is understood as their role
in the family’s decision-making process.
26
Favourable or unfavourable outcomes
caused by their participation in the PBF
may be analysed in light of the racial group
to which these women belong, taking
into consideration that the impact on
empowerment is directly linked to the
programme’s implementation model and
to its effects on the family and on women,
once their bargaining power is altered.
When it comes to indicators that measure
job supply for adults in these households,
the goal is to determine whether PBF
creates negative gender- or race-related
labour incentives by reducing the
participation of these men and women in
the labour market.
On the other hand, if the level of
participation increases, this would lead
to job-seeking and, consequently, to the
employment of the adult members of
a household. A conclusion that may be
drawn is that the PBF’s main impact on
adult employment actually represents
an income effect, according to which a
rise in the income obtained from cash
transfers would increase the demand for
normal goods, including consumption and
entertainment, and reduce the economic
necessity for work, thus decreasing
working hours.
In this vein, the PBF would ultimately
reduce the level of employment.
Nevertheless, if family labour supply
is taken into consideration, it may be
concluded that decisions concerning
the time allocation of different household
members are affected by the value
of their time. Since PBF benefits are
“
…the hypothesis
stating that cash transfers
discourage people from
seeking work was not
confirmed for any of the
groups within this study.
Programa Bolsa Família
increases the level of
employment for women.
Source: Cedeplar, 2005.
Obs.: Significance levels: * 0.10; ** 0.05; *** 0.01.
usually granted to families with children,
who must attend school, the value of
a child’s time in the labour market is
significantly reduced.
Therefore, since there is less labour
availability in the household because
the children work less, the level of
employment of the other members of
the family should increase, in terms of
both working hours as well as domestic
activities. Women may be subject
to additional impacts because they
must comply with the programme
conditionalities—something that may
consume more of their time and may
consequently reduce their time devoted
to work or leisure.
Table 1 demonstrates the likelihood ratio
for the treatment variable coefficient in
each of the estimated regressions. With
regard to the occupation results, the
positive differences for the treatment group
are quite significant, especially for men
and white individuals. When we combine
the groups, the favourable outcomes are
concentrated mostly among white men but
can also be found among black men and
white women. This leads to the conclusion
that, when it comes to occupation, black
women are somewhat excluded from such
effects. Nevertheless, the hypothesis stating
that cash transfers discourage people from
seeking work was not confirmed for any
of the groups within this study, which is
something quite positive. If, on the one
hand, the difference between the groups is
not significant in regard to women, on the
other, there seems to be an increase in the
indicator that expresses job-seeking.
To obtain indications of the PBF’s
potential impacts in terms of gender
and race, propensity score weighted
regressions were estimated for individual
results, according to gender and race
criteria, using a treatment group (PBF
recipients) and a control group (people
who do not receive benefits from any
type of cash transfer programme) and
cross-referencing this data with family
per capita income eligibility.
The sample was limited to adults
aged 24–59 years old, with the workrelated variables analysed being:
occupation, job-seeking, transition
into unemployment, and use of time
(time allocated to work and household
activities during a typical weekday).
Policy in Focus
27
“
By also taking
into consideration the
indirect indicators
for empowerment, greater
social participation and
level of employment,
we may conclude that
the PBF has extremely
positive short-term results,
which are measured
when these benefits
are granted to the
poor Brazilian
population in general.
Obs.: Significance levels: * 0.10; ** 0.05; *** 0.01.
This in particular is extremely important
for women. Nonetheless, when these
estimates are evaluated against different
racial groups, it can be inferred that the
effect of job-seeking is concentrated in
the racial group of white women.
With respect to occupational transitions,
which test the hypothesis that individuals
leave their jobs once they start receiving
the benefits, we found that there is a
significant effect, and figures point in the
opposite direction only for black men.
Differences in the use of time among
adult women were also analysed.
By selecting variables concerning time
allocated to remunerated activities,
both inside and outside their homes,
as well as household and family chores,
especially childcare, the gender and race
perspectives were included using the
characteristics of those responsible
for the household.
Table 2 presents the results of the
difference tests, which confirm in
detail that the PBF increases the level of
28
employment for women. From any of the
perspectives used to analyse the gender
and race of the person responsible for
the household, it is possible to conclude
that there is a significant difference in
the time women allocate to external
remunerated activities.
As expected, in households where a
woman is the head of the family, this
difference is even larger, especially
for white women.
In cases in which the man is the head
of the household and the woman is
considered the spouse, the difference
between the treatment and control
groups is still significant.
Considering the reference values
concerning time allocation for the
treatment group, as illustrated in Table 3,
it may be inferred that differences
reported in table 2 represent roughly
20 per cent for women in households that
are headed by black women, white men
and black men, and more than 40
The differences between women in the
treatment and control groups can be
found in all levels.
Moreover, it is important to highlight
that women’s decision-making power
decreases as the dimensions increase, and
it rises once again at the maximum level
(which considers decision-making in
all of the dimensions analysed).
This direct indicator of bargaining
power in the family denotes the
empowerment of black women in this
environment, when it comes to decisions
concerning the traditional role of females
in the family, as well as their role in the
market, outside an exclusive family
or household analysis.
By also taking into consideration the
indirect indicators of empowerment,
greater social participation and level of
employment, we may conclude that the
PBF has extremely positive short-term
results, which are measured when these
benefits are granted to the poor
Brazilian population in general.
per cent in cases in which the head
of the household is a white woman.
the comparison and race groups,
however, are quite significant.
Therefore, the hypothesis that the PBF
increases the level of employment for
women, in terms of remunerated working
hours and not necessarily domestic
activities, is reinforced.
In the first two columns of the graph it
is possible to observe that there is a 58
per cent likelihood that women from the
comparison group are not involved in
decision-making, versus a likelihood of
52 per cent for women in PBF beneficiary
families. When these women’s racial
group are taken into consideration, we
may conclude that, in both comparison
groups, black women have more decisionmaking power, which becomes evident
based on the lower likelihood of not
making family decisions.
The Cedeplar (2005) research also
provided a new possibility for analysis, in
which a bargaining power indicator was
estimated for women, white women and
black women in the household for the
purposes of quantifying the PBF’s role
in empowering these individuals within
their own families.
This analysis considers women’s decisionmaking power in their homes based on
household expenses, children’s education,
spouse’s employment, and use of
contraceptive methods.
A variable was devised to quantify
these dimensions, and ordered logistic
regressions were used to estimate the
differences between the treatment and
control groups.
Figure 1 shows that most women have
no decision-making power in their
families, regardless of which group—
racial or treatment—was used as a
reference. The differences between
To illustrate this point, the last column
shows that black women from the
treatment group are the least likely to not
make any decisions for their families.
By including decision-making in our
analysis, in the interval between one and
10 dimensions, Figure 2 demonstrates
that black women who are PBF recipients
have a greater likelihood of making
decisions at any of the levels analysed,
especially at the intermediate level.
This reinforces the conclusion that this
specific group of women (‘black treatment
group’ in the graph) holds greater decisionmaking power.
Final comments
This work demonstrates the relevance of
differences in gender and race in terms
of participation in the labour market, as
well as in women’s use of time and their
decision-making power within the family
unit, which are essential dimensions
to understanding the process of
empowerment of women and
black people in Brazil.
As such, there is ample room for genderand race-oriented research about the
impacts of cash transfer programmes.
It is quite important to compare the
short-term and long-term impacts
produced after the implementation of
the programme, focusing especially on
the all-too-often overlooked dimensions
of these impacts.
This will enable us to better understand
the process of women’s empowerment,
which is mediated by the racial group to
which they belong.
Cedeplar (2005). Avaliação de Impacto do
Programa Bolsa Família. Belo Horizonte, Centro
de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional/
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
Policy in Focus
29
Self-Help Groups:
Empowering Women in India
by Ashleigh Kate Slingsby, the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG)
In India, self-help groups (SHGs)
have emerged as a favoured model of
facilitating economic empowerment in
poor, rural communities through the
provision of microcredit loans. India is
home to approximately 8 million SHGs,
with the participation of over 95 million
households (NABARD, 2013). The impact
of SHGs on women’s empowerment in
India is widely recognized, with over 80 per
cent of bank linked SHGs being exclusively
dedicated to women. In this context,
empowerment is understood to mean
access to and control of one’s finances
(Burra et al., 2005).
What are SHGs?
SHGs are informal groups of 10 to 20
men or women, usually in rural areas,
who participate in the accumulation of
collective capital to access a microcredit
loan from a formal banking institution.
The SHG serves as an intermediary between
its members and the banking institution,
with the aid of either the government, a
non-governmental organisation (NGO) or
a microfinancing institution (MFI). Only
members of the group or community have
access to the fund. The group fund serves as
a mechanism to achieve self-employment,
to ensure that credit is put to good use and
that debt is repaid.
SHG membership is based on the discretion
of the group itself. Pre-existing community
bonds frequently determine membership,
as such groupings are a traditional
component of rural Indian society. Criteria
for membership often includes:
geographic proximity;
coming from a similar economic
background (usually poor);
a commitment to repaying the loan;
a social relationship with
established members
(friend/family/caste/colleague);
a good personal reputation; and
a willingness to participate in group
meetings (Reddy and Reddy, 2012: 14).
30
SHGs have a presence in every state in
India; however, implementation of the
model varies (Centre for Micro Finance,
2010). Essentially, the SHG model is
founded on the principle of solidarity
through group collateral—a factor
that distinguishes it fundamentally
from microfinancing schemes aimed at
individuals. By arranging loans on a group
basis, transaction costs, paperwork, time
and travel are reduced, making lending
accessible to poor people in rural areas.
Group collateral and the involvement of
intermediary institutions simultaneously
encourages the participation of banks that
would otherwise be dissuaded to do so
due to the high risk of default involved in
lending to people from poor backgrounds
with little financial knowhow.
Why India?
SHGs have existed for over 20 years in
India. The National Bank for Agriculture
and Rural Development (NABARD),
initiated by the Indian government in
1981, serves as the primary credit provider.
The Indian government has prioritised
the granting of credit for agricultural and
rural development and has exclusively
dedicated funding to women’s SHGs
(WSHGs). This has included the creation
of a WSHG Development Fund aimed at
enhancing access to bank credit via low
interest rates. NABARD takes the lead in
partnering with NGOs and the government
in promoting and supporting SHGs in rural
areas. It ensures visibility, training, financial
assistance and 100 per cent refinancing
against bank loans for SHGs.
Traditionally, rural Indian women do not
have family assets or bank accounts in their
name. Therefore, WSHGs enable women
to gain a level of economic independence
that is not conventionally afforded to
them. Notably, WSHGs have been found
to improve the health, nutrition and
schooling of the children of participating
women, as women are more likely to invest
their increased income into the well-being
of their families (Puhazhendhi, 2013: 21).
Women have also been found to be more
diligent participants in SHGs, rendering
women’s SHGs a productive tool of not
only women’s empowerment, but poverty
reduction at large. The vast majority of
SHG members have been found to be
married and subsisting on government
food subsidies. Therefore, microcredit
loans assist families significantly through
economic shocks, helping to divert
the risk of falling further into poverty.
Consequently, SHGs have been found
to develop the local economy of rural
communities, expanding benefits beyond
participating beneficiaries.
The capacity of SHGs to empower women,
and the demand among women for
participation in SHGs, particularly in
lieu of entrepreneurial initiatives, has
enhanced the role of women-centred
organisations aimed at facilitating
WSHGs. Friends of Women’s World
Banking (FWWB) and the trade union, Self
Employed Women’s Association (SEWA),
feature prominently in India in this regard.
Entrepreneurship represents a founding
commitment of many WSHGs. An example
is the Kudumbashree Programme in the
southern state of Kerala, dedicated to
alleviating poverty in communities.
India’s unique socio-historical circumstances
render WSHGs of immense utility in
empowering marginalised women
such as tribal women and those
of underprivileged castes/varnas
(Shudras and Dalits or untouchables).
Most of India’s poor people live in rural
areas. Labour, agriculture and entry-level
services are the predominant occupations
of rural Indian women. Thus, access
to credit enables women to pursue
occupations with the potential for greater
economic reward. Additionally, WSHGs
have been found to have a positive
impact on women’s confidence and
political empowerment. Studies (Tankha,
2012) in Punjab and West Bengal revealed
that WSHGs enhance women’s financial
awareness, improving their financial
decision-making and savings. Therefore,
WSHGs contribute to blurring gender
lines, enhancing women’s negotiating
power and consequently, to elevating
their positions in their homes and
communities at large.
Challenges and criticisms
Between 70 and 80 per cent of Indian
SHGs exist in India’s southern states.
The south is also home to India’s highest
Human Development Index (HDI) ratings.
The correlation between the contribution
of SHGs and Human Development is
uncertain. A complication exists in
isolating which programme has been
responsible for empowering women the
most, as many women participate in SHGs,
independent microfinancing and various
government programmes simultaneously.
Even so, available data does indicate that
most SHGs have had a positive impact on
household income, financial knowledge
and confidence. Beyond the success that
has been achieved lie many challenges.
In terms of coverage, substantial
disparities in SHG success exist between
states. Furthermore, as recognised in
the 2012 State of the Sector Report
(Puhazhendhi, 2013), defaulting on
SHG bank loans remains a considerable
challenge to the maintenance of initiatives.
Poor capacity-building represents a central
obstacle in this regard. Poor capacity is
also responsible for many groups not
receiving their loans. Likewise, capacitybuilding is crucial to reduce members’
dependency on external financial advisers,
although members have reported that the
risk of dependency is outweighed by the
potential benefit of a microcredit loan.
A major criticism of SHGs is that available
data overestimates the positive impact of
initiatives due to self-selection, meaning
the participation of women who are
already economically empowered.
However a study (Reddy and Reddy, 2012)
of 1942 SHGs in December 2012 found 43
per cent of SHG members (both women
and men) to be landless and 75 per cent
to be living below the poverty line—
demonstrating that overall the intended
beneficiaries are indeed participating in
SHGs. Even so, it can be said that women
represent the poorest of the poor and are
frequently overlooked and, consequently,
neglected by SHGs due to social alienation
and poor access to information.
“
SHGs need to actively improve their
targeting to enhance the participation
of the poorest women, as was exhibited
in the case of Bandhan in West Bengal,
which implemented ‘Targeting Hardcore
Poor’ (Puhazhendhi, 2013). Furthermore,
the background of members in terms
of education, gender and caste, as well
as the degree of poverty, needs to be
taken into account by SHGs. It has been
submitted that they should adapt to the
specific points of need and provide more
specialised services to their members.
WSHGs have
been found to improve
the health, nutrition and
schooling of the children
of participating women
as women are more likely
to invest their increased
income in the well-being
of their families.
It must be acknowledged that the studies
that have been conducted on the impact
of SHGs have often been sporadic, limited
in scope and criticised on the grounds of
methodology. Frequently the impacts of
loans are not accounted for on an individual
or even household level. However, some
SHGs appoint bookkeepers, reflecting a
well-functioning SHG. The quality and
scope of data collection must be improved,
most likely with the increased intervention
of NABARD, for accurate accountability and
impact to be assessed.
SHG regulations, indicating increasing
institutional sustainability (Ibid).
SHGs are an important model of facilitating
the economic empowerment of women in
terms of increasing their bargaining power,
providing financial education, fostering
entrepreneurship and enhancing the
communitarian bond of poor, rural women
in India. Nevertheless, considerable
room for growth still exists.
Looking forward
In terms of women’s empowerment,
the success of SHGs has been largely
dependent on the purposeful intervention,
on the part of the intermediary entities, in
targeting gender-related issues, as well as
the extent of the impact on those living
in extreme poverty. Literacy has emerged
as a major determinant of women being
leaders of SHGs; however, few SHGs
contribute to improving the literacy of
their members. Most often the SHG leader
determines the use of and access to the
loan, thus literacy is rendered a highly
decisive factor in achieving the equitable
empowerment of women. Unfortunately,
it has been found that the majority
(62 per cent) of female members are
illiterate (Reddy and Reddy, 2012).
Therefore, education, financial training
and gender sensitisation remain central
areas of concern.
Burra, S. (2005). Towards a pro-poor slum
upgrading framework in Mumbai, India.
Environment and Urbanization, Vol 17.
In conclusion, SHGs represent a
successful model for tackling poverty and
empowering women. Reports indicate
that SHGs are garnering increased access
to credit among an increasing number of
participants and that outstanding loans
are decreasing annually. Furthermore,
SHGs are experiencing greater cooperation
among members and adherence to
Centre for Micro Finance (2010). Microfinance
Penetration in India. Institute for Financial
Management and Research website,
<http://www.centre-for-microfinance.org/
mfimaps/maps.htm> (accessed 21 January 2014).
Deininger, K. and Liu Y. (2013). Evaluating
Program Impacts on Mature Self-help Groups in
India. World Bank Economic Review, Vol. 27, No. 2.
Husain, Z., D. Mukerjee and Dutta M. (2010).
Self Help Groups and Empowerment of Women:
Self-selection or Actual Benefits? Analyzing
empowerment levels of SHG group members.
Munich, RePEc Archive.
NABARD (2013). Status of Microfinance in India
2012-2013. NABARD Head Office, Mumbai.
Puhazhendhi, V. (2013). Microfinance India: State
of the Sector Report 2012. Analyzing the progress
of microfinance in India in 2011–12. New Delhi,
ACCESS Development Services.
Reddy, K.R. and Reddy C.S. (2012).
Self Help Groups in India: A study on Quality and
Sustainability. Hyderabad, Enable Secretariat.
Tankha, A. (2012). Banking on Self-help
groups: Twenty Years On. New Delhi, ACCESS
Development Services, SAGE Publications.
UN Women South Asia (2012). UN Women in
India, UN Women South Asia website, <http://
www.unwomensouthasia.org/un-women-insouth-asia-2/un-women-in-india/overviewindia/> (accessed 21 January 2014).
Policy in Focus
31
Beijing+20:
Where Do We Stand?
by Nadine Gasman, UN Women Brazil
In 1995, representatives of UN Member
States met in Beijing, China, during the
Fourth World Conference on Women.
This meeting resulted in an agreement to
promote gender equality and eliminate
discrimination against women and
girls all over the world.
Along with the outcomes obtained at the
23rd Special Session of the UN General
Assembly in 2000, the conference’s final
document, the Beijing Platform for Action,
became an agenda for empowerment,
providing a definition and an underlying
policy framework to strengthen gender
equality and women’s rights. In addition,
this has encouraged governments to
promote targeted activities.
Twenty years after its inception, the Beijing
Platform for Action is still up to date.
The document lists 12 critical areas of
concern, aside from detailed actions to
achieve its strategic objectives. Hence,
it is a roadmap to strengthen gender
equality and promote women’s
empowerment in every country.
History shows that the documents signed
by Brazil to advance gender equality are
a collection of good intentions and
some real achievements. Despite this, and
the challenging goals that have been set,
these agreements are ultimately used as
a way to exert pressure on governments
to prompt them to deliver concrete
results in areas in which they have made
international commitments.
We know that a lot of work must still be
done to reach the goal of promoting gender
equality and women’s empowerment.
The Beijing Platform for Action is being
reviewed in the interest of highlighting
the progress and the challenges in the
implementation of these norms,
thus providing a tangible path
towards development.
The review process
In July 2013 the UN Economic and Social
Council tasked the Commission on the
32
Status of Women (CSW) with reviewing
and assessing the execution of the Beijing
Declaration and its Platform for Action, 20
years after it was first adopted. The Council
asked the states to make a commitment
at the national level to perform
comprehensive reviews of the progress
and challenges in the implementation
of the document. It also fostered the
creation of regional commissions to carry
out the review process. Moreover, the
Council asked civil society to actively
participate in this undertaking.
The Beijing review and appraisal process
is happening at a strategic moment: the
global community is intensifying its efforts
to meet the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), preparing a post-2015
development agenda, and focusing on the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
These processes are interconnected
and provide a unique opportunity to
mainstream gender equality, women’s
rights and empowerment within the global
agenda, not only as a goal per se but as
an essential way to promote sustainable
development in all its dimensions.
The Beijing+20 programme will involve
stakeholders at the national, regional
and, ultimately, the global level, who will
engage in intense consultation and social
and political mobilisation. This process
began in July 2013 and gave rise to broad
national debates that are
currently underway.
This information will fuel the regional
reviews, which will take place throughout
2014. The culmination of this process will
occur in March 2015, when the CSW will
carry out a comprehensive review and
appraisal of the implementation of the
Beijing Declaration and its Platform for
Action at the global level. This initiative
will also address the opportunities
to strengthen gender equality and
women’s empowerment in the post-2015
development agenda by introducing a
gendered perspective.
The 12 critical areas of concern
The 1995 Beijing Platform for Action
highlighted 12 critical areas of concern,
which are:
Women and poverty
More than 1 billion people in the world
today, the great majority of whom are
women, live in unacceptable conditions
of poverty, mostly in developing
countries. Poverty has various causes,
including structural ones. Poverty is a
complex, multidimensional problem,
with origins in both the national and
international domains.
In Brazil approximately 3.5 million people
were lifted out of poverty in 2012. Today
in Brazil, around 15.7 million people are
poverty-stricken, out of which 6.53 million
continue to live below the poverty line.
Poverty and extreme poverty exist among
families in which the head of household is
a woman (34.8 per cent), a black or mixedrace individual (55 per cent) or a person
with incomplete primary schooling
(26 per cent) (IPEA, 2013).
Education and training of women
Education is a human right and an
essential tool for achieving the goals
of equality, development and peace.
Non-discriminatory education benefits
both girls and boys and thus ultimately
contributes to more equal relationships
between women and men.
According to the 2010 Brazilian census,
women already outnumber men in
Brazilian colleges. Among people who
are 25 or older, 9.9 per cent of men and
12.5 per cent of women have at least a
college degree.
These figures rise to 11.5 per cent and
19.2 per cent, respectively, for those
who were already employed. Female
schooling levels are also higher in the
18–24 age group. Additionally, the early
school dropout rate is higher among
boys (IBGE, 2012a).
Despite this, the 2012 Global Development
Report: Gender Equality and Development
(World Bank, 2012) reveals that women
and men still select significantly different
study areas at the vocational and higher
education level. They also tend to work in
extremely different areas of the ‘economic
realm’, with little change noticed over
time (World Bank, 2012).
Women have a greater likelihood than
men of participating in low-productivity
or low-profitability activities. Therefore,
despite the larger number of women
in universities, several barriers must be
simultaneously removed—in the market in
general, in institutions and in the domestic
sphere—to modify this inequality.
Women and health
Women have the right to the enjoyment of
the highest attainable standard of physical
and mental health. Their enjoyment of this
right is vital to their life and well-being and
their ability to participate in all areas of
public and private life.
Despite all the efforts and a few advances,
there are still essentialist notions in Brazil
that reduce the topic of ‘women’s health’
to the reproductive and private sphere,
while men’s health is considered part
of the productive and public sphere.
It is true that we need greater investments
in these areas, but we must also break
away from such stereotypes in the interest
of influencing the development of
public policies. We must develop studies
to fill in the gaps that still exist in the area
of women’s health, such as the effects of
gender-based violence, mental health,
stress and the double work burden.
Violence against women
Violence against women is an obstacle
to the achievement of the objectives of
equality, development and peace.
Violence against women both violates
and impairs or nullifies women’s
enjoyment of their human rights
and fundamental freedoms.
“
Despite all the
efforts and a few advances,
there are still essentialist
notions in Brazil that reduce
the topic of ‘women’s
health’ to the reproductive
and private sphere,
while men’s health is
considered part of the
productive and
public sphere.
Women have a greater
likelihood than men
of participating in lowproductivity or lowprofitability activities.
With the approval of Law 11.340, known
as the ‘Maria da Penha Law’, Brazil took a
step forward in fighting violence against
women. Nevertheless, the justice
system must assimilate and adequately
enforce the legislation. Impunity is still
one of the factors that contribute to the
alarming rate of feminicide in the country.
Therefore, despite the
larger number of women in
universities, several barriers
must be simultaneously
removed —in the market in
general, in institutions and
in the domestic sphere—
to modify this inequality.
Women and armed conflict
An environment that maintains world peace and promotes
and protects human rights, democracy and the peaceful
settlement of disputes, in accordance with the principles of
non-threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political
independence and of respect for sovereignty as set forth in
the United Nations Charter, is an important factor for the
advancement of women.
In 2011, UN Women and the Ministry of Defence of Brazil signed
a Letter of Intent to include a gender perspective in training
programmes for Brazilian peacekeepers and to promote
cooperation in peace and security issues.
Twice a year, UN Women delivers a presentation at the Brazilian
Peacekeeping Joint Centre to the troops who join the United
Nations Stabilisation Mission
in Haiti (Minustah). UN Women has also worked to incorporate a
gendered perspective into the activities of the Truth Commission.
Women and the economy
There are considerable differences in women’s and men’s access
and opportunities to exert power over economic structures in
their societies. In most parts of the world, women are virtually
absent from—or are poorly represented in—economic decisionmaking, including the making of financial, monetary, commercial
and other economic policies, as well as tax systems and
rules governing pay.
Photo: “Nobuhle” by Gabrielle Holmes.
Policy in Focus
33
According to data from the Ministry of
Labour and Employment (2012), the
participation of women in the Brazilian
labour market grew more than that of men
in 2012. A growth rate of 3.89 per cent was
recorded for women and 1.46 per cent for
men. Consequently, women now represent
42.47 per cent of the workforce. However,
salaries are still unequal: average wages for
men rose 3.35 per cent in 2012, and 2.62
per cent for women.
Women in power and decision-making
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
states that everyone has the right to take
part in the government of his/her country.
The empowerment and autonomy of
women and the improvement of women’s
social, economic and political status are
essential for the achievement of both
transparent and accountable government
and administration and sustainable
development in all areas of life.
In Brazil only 14.81 per cent of the Senators
and 8.77 per cent of Representatives elected
in 2010 were women. Therefore, although
the President is a woman, and there are
more women in ministerial functions,
women still have to overcome several
obstacles to occupy high-echelon positions.
“
Therefore, although
the President is a woman,
and there are more women
in ministerial functions,
women still have to
overcome several
obstacles to occupy
high-echelon positions.
In Brazil the media in
general continues to use
gender stereotypes.
Women—especially black
and indigenous women—
are underrepresented
in the press.
34
Institutional mechanisms
for the advancement of women
Economic development is not enough to
reduce all gender disparities—corrective
policies and specific budgets to address
persistent gender gaps are essential.
The institutional mechanisms for the
advancement of women are vital
for women’s political action, their
representation, and for technical,
legislative and budgetary planning.
In 1985 the Brazilian National Council for
Women’s Rights (CNDM) of the Ministry
of Justice was created for the purpose of
promoting policies to end discrimination
against women and to guarantee their
participation in the country’s political,
economic and cultural activities.
In 2002 the State Secretariat for Women’s
Rights (SEDIM) was conceived. It is also
linked to the Ministry of Justice. The
mandate of the CNDM remained unaltered.
In 2003 the creation of the Secretariat
for Women’s Policies of the Presidency of
the Republic (SPM) signalled a transition
in the gender equality agenda, which
came to occupy a central role in the
Brazilian government in view of its direct
connection to the Presidential Office and
its higher hierarchical status.
Progressive and significant advances were
made in the last few years. Nonetheless,
we believe that cross-cutting gender
policy in Brazil is still under construction.
We still have a long way to go in terms of
making public-sector managers aware
of the importance of this specific issue.
Women’s human rights
Human rights and fundamental freedoms
are the birth right of all human beings;
their protection and promotion is the
first responsibility of governments.
The Platform for Action reaffirms that all
human rights—civil, cultural, economic,
political and social, including the right to
development—are universal, indivisible,
interdependent and interrelated, as
expressed in the Vienna Declaration and
Programme of Action adopted by the
World Conference on Human Rights.
Women and the media
During the past decade, advances in
information technology have facilitated
a global communications network that
transcends national boundaries and
has an impact on public policy, private
attitudes and behaviour, especially of
children and young adults.
The potential exists everywhere for the
media to make a far greater contribution
to the advancement of women.
In Brazil the media in general continues
to use gender stereotypes. Women—
especially black and indigenous women—
are underrepresented in the press.
Furthermore, communication vehicles
make direct or indirect references to racist,
sexist, discriminatory, derogatory and
stereotypical ideas and perspectives
about women, among other groups.
Nevertheless, new technologies have
promoted changes in the way society
thinks and acts, producing effects in
the ethical, political and cultural spheres.
In the wake of these transformations,
social movements and some
communication sectors have made
considerable efforts to build an anti-racist,
anti-sexist and multi-ethnic media.
The combination of these new
possibilities with the pressure exerted
by social movements is creating a
foundation for the construction of
a new political and legal framework
for the communications sector.
The appropriate tools exist to reach this
new level of female representation
in the media.
Women and the environment
Sustainable development is inherently
linked to the eradication of poverty,
the reduction of disparities, and the
commitment of all countries to inclusive
and sustainable growth, both in terms
of production and consumption.
Women can and should act as agents,
leaders and active participants in the
advancement of sustainable development
if they are given the opportunity to gain
equal access to resources, funds,
methods and technology.
They play a pivotal role in decision-making
and are strong advocates of sustainability.
In 2012 Brazil hosted the United
Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development(Rio+20). The conference’s
final document reaffirmed that women
play a vital and leading role in all three
dimensions of sustainable development:
social, economic and environmental.
It also established the foundation for the
inclusion of gender equality and women’s
empowerment in the SDGs and in the
post-2015 development agenda.
Girls and their rights as children
The Convention on the Rights of the Child
recognises that “States Parties shall respect
and ensure the rights set forth in the
present Convention to each child within
their jurisdiction without discrimination
of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or
his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race,
colour, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national, ethnic or social
origin, property, disability, birth or
status” (1989).
In Brazil the situation in which millions of
girls and teenagers find themselves is a
major cause for concern, especially those
who live in extreme poverty or are subject
to gender discrimination and other
types of violence.
sustainable development for present and
future generations. UN Women has been
tirelessly working to help Brazil one day
achieve this goal.
In Brazil girls who are 16 years of age
or older are allowed to get married.
Teenagers who are 14 to 16 years old need
legal authorisation to do so. For those
less than 14 years old, formal marriage is
considered a crime.
Gender Equality Observatory for Latin
America and the Caribbean (2013). Annual
Report 2012. Santiago de Chile, ECLAC/CEPAL,
<http://www.eclac.cl/publicaciones/
xml/5/50235/GenderEqualityObservatory.pdf>
Nonetheless, official data from the 2010
IBGE Census (IBGE, 2012b) demonstrate
that there are 17,166,761 people between
the ages of 10 and 14 in Brazil, out of
which 45,785 said they are either in a
stable relationship or informally wed.
IBGE (2012a). Censo 2010: mulheres são
mais instruídas que homens ampliam nível
ocupação. Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Brasileiro
de Geografia e Estatística, <http://censo2010.
ibge.gov.br/noticias-censo?view=noticia&id
=3&idnoticia=2296&busca=1&t=censo-2010mulheres-sao-mais-instruidas-que-homensampliam-nivel-ocupacao>
In 2009, 2.8 per cent of the adolescents
aged between 12 and 17 had one or more
children (UNICEF, 2011). In 2010, 12 per
cent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 years
had at least one child (Gender Equality
Observatory for Latin America and the
Caribbean, 2013).
Teenage pregnancies are usually
unplanned and unwanted, and most cases
result from sexual violence and abuse or
from early marriages, usually to older men.
Motherhood becomes a mechanism
that reproduces exclusion, poverty and
inequality, and it represents a serious
threat to the full development and
enjoyment of these girls’ rights.
IBGE (2012b). Censo Demográfico 2010.
Nupcialidade,_Fecundidade_e Migracao.
Rio de Janeiro, Instituto Brasileiro de
Geografia e Estatística, <http://censo2010.
ibge.gov.br/noticias-censo?view=noticia&id
=3&idnoticia=2296&busca=1&t=censo-2010mulheres-sao-mais-instruidas-que-homensampliam-nivel-ocupacao>
IPEA (2013). ‘Duas décadas de desigualdade
e pobreza no Brasil medidas pela Pnad/IBGE’,
Comunicados do Ipea, No. 159. Brasília,
Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada,
<http://www.ipea.gov.br/portal/images/
stories/PDFs/comunicado/131001_
comunicadoipea159.pdf>
Ministry of Labour and Employment (2012).
Características do Emprego Formal segundo a
Relação Anual de Info rmações Sociais – 2012.
Brasília, Ministry of Labour and Employment,
<http://portal.mte.gov.br/data/files/
FF808081419E9C900141B74A39245892/
Principais%20Resultados%20-%20Ano%20
base%202012%202.pdf>
These 12 areas of critical concern
highlighted by the Beijing Platform for
Action are already being analysed at the
local and global levels.
The world has enough knowledge,
technology and resources to eradicate
gender inequalities, and the Beijing
Platform for Action appraisal programme
will produce new incentives for the
advancement of women.
UNICEF (2011). Situação da Adolescência
Brasileira 2011. O direito de ser adolescente:
Oportunidade para reduzir vulnerabilidades e
superar desigualdades. Brasília, UNICEF.
Women aspire to a future in which the
world is wholesome, free from hunger,
violence and poverty; a world that
prioritises equality, human rights and
gender equality; where women and
men, girls and boys have the same
right to resources and opportunities,
and share the same leadership
positions and decision-making power; a
world where women are acknowledged
as a coherent, integrated, innovative
and dynamic force to promote
United Nations General Assembly (1989).
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
New York, Treaty Series, vol. 1577
Waiselfisz, J.J. (2012). Mapa da Violência 2012.
Atualização: Homicídio de mulheres no Brasil.
Rio de Janeiro, Latin American School
of Social Sciences, <http://www.
mapadaviolencia.org.br/pdf2012/
MapaViolencia2012_atual_mulheres.pdf>
World Bank (2012). Global Development
Report: Gender Equality and Development.
Washington, DC, World Bank,
<https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/
handle/10986/4391>
Policy in Focus
35
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG)
SBS, Quadra 1, Bloco J, Ed. BNDES, 13º andar
70076-900 Brasilia, DF - Brazil
Telephone: +55 61 2105 5000
E-mail: [email protected]  URL: www.ipc-undp.org
“
“
“
It is necessary to acknowledge that violence against women
and girls is the expression of a social and cultural phenomenon of power
and submission between men and women, which leads
to multiple human rights violations and which is not natural,
acceptable or tolerable in any way.
Maria da Penha Institute and UN Women Brazil
When women are treated as citizens and have opportunities
to voice their views throughout the social transfer programme cycle
they will be better able to become the ‘makers and shapers’
of development as well as promoters of programming
in closer alignment with their needs.
Nicola Jones, Overseas Development Institute and
Maxine Molyneux, University College London
In the end, a political solution has to be developed based on the Afghan
Constitution and the promotion of human rights, especially women’s rights.
The path towards a prosperous future cannot be accomplished if women
are not recognised and integrated into society.
Rangina Kargar, National Assembly of Afghanistan,
Representative - Faryab Province

Protagonist Women - International Policy Centre for inclusive Growth

Transcription

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